Sail the Red Ship to the South,2012
wood, oil, acrylic
62 x 41 x 6 cm
Monday, March 19, 2012
Παρελάσεις και διαμαρτυρία
Τα πρόσφατα γεγονότα στη Ρόδο συμπυκνώνουν με χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο το επαναλαμβανόμενο μοτίβο: ομάδες αποδοκιμάζουν παρευρισκόμενους πολιτικούς, οι αποδοκιμασίες καταλήγουν σε «επίθεση» με ρίψη αντικειμένων, οι πολιτικοί αποχωρούν. Συχνά οι διαμαρτυρίες προαναγγέλλονται μέσω διαδικτύου και στον αρχικό πυρήνα (που έχει χαρακτηριστικά συντεταγμένης ομάδας) προστίθενται κι άλλοι, καθώς η ασφυκτική συγκυρία αποτελεί τον καλύτερο τροφοδότη της λαϊκής αγανάκτησης. Έχουν πολλά ειπωθεί για τη «διαμαρτυρία των γιαουρτιών» και μάλλον δεν ωφελεί ιδιαίτερα ο «καθεστωτικός» λόγος επίπληξης προς τους διαμαρτυρόμενους. Όμως, χρήσιμες είναι ορισμένες επισημάνσεις.
Ένα σεβαστό τμήμα των «αγανακτισμένων» αναπαράγει το σύνθημα «Αλήτες – προδότες – πολιτικοί». Ελάχιστη γνώση πολιτικής Ιστορίας αρκεί για να αντιληφθούμε την προέλευση του συνθήματος. Ο χαρακτηρισμός «προδότες» αποπνέει ακροδεξιά οσμή που δεν χάνεται, ανεξαρτήτως ποια χείλη ξεστομίζουν το σύνθημα. Αυτό ακριβώς το σημείο αποτελεί μια από τις τραγωδίες της σημερινής Αριστεράς: υποκύπτοντας στην ευκολία του εθνολαϊκιστικού χουλιγκανισμού παίζει με τους όρους εκείνων που βρίσκονται στον ιδεολογικό της αντίποδα. Θεωρεί ότι βάζοντας νερό στο διεθνιστικό της κρασί θα προσελκύσει όσους δονούνται από αισθήματα εθνοφυλετισμού. Στην πραγματικότητα απλώς σύρεται προς το μέρος τους. Χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα ο πολιτικός αρχηγός της Αριστεράς που δηλώνει «μάλλον αυτοί που μας κυβερνούν δεν είναι και τόσο Έλληνες». Κλείνει το μάτι σε έναν κόσμο ζηλωτών, μιλάει με κώδικα Τράγκα και ανασύρει την μειωμένη εθνικοφροσύνη. Με λίγα λόγια, σπέρνει ανέμους.
Ταυτόχρονα, η παιδαγωγική της μούντζας ανάγει περίπου σε εμβληματικό τον ρόλο μαθητών που παρελαύνουν με την παλάμη ανοιχτή προς την εξέδρα των επισήμων. Είναι μέρος της ενηλικίωσης οι νέοι να «βγάζουν τη γλώσσα» στους μεγάλους και καμιά ηθικοπλαστική διάθεση δεν αρκεί για να το παραβλέψουμε. Απλώς, ο δεκαεξάχρονος που μουντζώνει την πολιτική ηγεσία είναι σύμβολο της συλλογικής μας ήττας. Όχι τόσο γιατί επιλέγει έναν ακραία ακαλαίσθητο τρόπο αποδοκιμασίας, μα κυρίως γιατί εννοεί να το κάνει εκ του ασφαλούς (με την πεποίθηση και τη διεκδίκηση της ατιμωρησίας) και αδιακρίτως. Και εάν η περσινή πρώτη μούντζα μπορεί να συμβόλιζε την εφηβική οργή, η γενίκευσή της γίνεται τελετουργική καρικατούρα, πιο μπανάλ κι από την ίδια την παρέλαση.
Πολλά από τα παραπάνω τα επισημαίνει και ο κυρίαρχος «αντιλαϊκιστικός» λόγος που καταδικάζει τις «πρακτικές των άκρων». Όμως οι φορείς του οφείλουν ταυτόχρονα να δουν κριτικά την πολιτική που τροφοδότησε το αντισυστημικό περιθώριο. Είναι η ίδια πολιτική που, στο όνομα της εθνικής σωτηρίας, άνοιξε το μεγάλο σαλόνι της κεντρικής πολιτικής σκηνής και υποδέχτηκε τους εκπροσώπους της εθνικιστικής, αντισημιτικής, ρατσιστικής Ακροδεξιάς. Κι εκείνοι άφησαν το τσεκούρι στην είσοδο και φόρεσαν το κουστούμι της συναινετικής υπευθυνότητας χωρίς ποτέ να ανακαλέσουν τις ιδεολογικές τους αναφορές. Το δικομματικό κατεστημένο βαρύνεται ιστορικά με αυτή τη νομιμοποίηση του μεταδικτατορικού χουντισμού. Παράλληλα, η ακροδεξιά ρητορική τείνει να ηγεμονεύσει στο δρόμο. Και έχει ευθύνες γι’ αυτό και η Αριστερά, γιατί θα έπρεπε να τραβάει ευδιάκριτες διαχωριστικές γραμμές και να αποστασιοποιείται από πρακτικές που τροφοδοτούν τον τυφλό εθνολαϊκισμό. Αντ’ αυτού, απλόχερα προσφέρει το άλλοθι της λαϊκής διαμαρτυρίας στη διάχυση της χουλιγκανικής βίας. Έτσι όμως σπρώχνει κόσμο στον τυφλό αντισυστημισμό και τον αντικοινοβουλευτισμό από τον οποίο έχει να χάσει κι η ίδια. Χρειάζεται απόδειξη; Στη Ρόδο, αφού οι εκπρόσωποι της πολιτικής ηγεσίας απομακρύνθηκαν κακήν κακώς, η παρέλαση συνεχίστηκε με την παρουσία εκπροσώπων του στρατού και της εκκλησίας! Κάτι τέτοιο, αν δεν απατά η μνήμη, έχει να συμβεί από την εποχή της δικτατορίας, όταν στρατός και εκκλησία ήταν οι μόνοι «ταγοί του έθνους».
Οι επικείμενες παρελάσεις ευλόγως απασχόλησαν τους αρμόδιους. Επέλεξαν τελικά να τις διοργανώσουν, με αυξημένη παρουσία κυβερνητικών στελεχών και αυστηρή περιφρούρηση. Σεβαστή η απόφαση αλλά σε καμιά περίπτωση δε φανερώνει θάρρος, όπως επιχειρείται να προβληθεί. Το αντίθετο θα έδειχνε τόλμη. Η κυβέρνηση, χωρίς να φοβηθεί τις ιερές κραυγές των εθναμυντόρων, έπρεπε να ανακοινώσει ότι αναστέλλονται οι παρελάσεις, στρατιωτικές και μαθητικές. Θα ρωτήσουν πολλοί: έπρεπε η συντεταγμένη πολιτεία να υποχωρήσει υπό το κράτος του φόβου; Όχι. Έπρεπε με θάρρος να επικαλεστεί τρία επιχειρήματα. Πρώτον, η δημοσιονομική συγκυρία δεν δικαιολογεί τη σπατάλη των παρελάσεων. Δεύτερον, το προαναγγελθέν πανελλαδικό φεστιβάλ αποδοκιμασίας καμιά σχέση δεν έχει με την επέτειο της 25ης Μαρτίου. Τρίτον, οι παρελάσεις αποτελούν κατάλοιπο άλλων εποχών στο οποίο επιδίδονται κυρίως στρατοκρατικά καθεστώτα και «λαϊκές δημοκρατίες». Τι άλλο χρειαζόταν η κυβέρνηση για να επιλέξει μια σεμνή εκδήλωση πραγματικής τιμής και μνήμης, αντίστοιχη με τα δεδομένα και τις ανάγκες των ημερών;
Κωστής Παπαϊωάννου, 19 Φεβ.2012
Source: http://antiphono.wordpress.com
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Paramath
My dear, what you teach me is:
some premise exists for luck—
a sly elasticity hid
in the apparently sheer
mathematics of Stasis
against Motion—a tuck,
you could say, in the fabric, in-
appreciable as object and ir-
relevant therefor to our cosmic
equations—or (face it) in-
equations (considering this
dire edge What’s-to-Come has,
always, over What-Is)....Oh yes,
I’m a philosopher too,
and wish I could make clear
to colleagues this curve of you
occurring just when it did.
But they are too distant; won’t
come close enough, I fear,
to cry What’s this! What’s this!
and be told Don’t worry. Don’t
erase anything. It’s just bliss.
Peter Kane Dufault's
some premise exists for luck—
a sly elasticity hid
in the apparently sheer
mathematics of Stasis
against Motion—a tuck,
you could say, in the fabric, in-
appreciable as object and ir-
relevant therefor to our cosmic
equations—or (face it) in-
equations (considering this
dire edge What’s-to-Come has,
always, over What-Is)....Oh yes,
I’m a philosopher too,
and wish I could make clear
to colleagues this curve of you
occurring just when it did.
But they are too distant; won’t
come close enough, I fear,
to cry What’s this! What’s this!
and be told Don’t worry. Don’t
erase anything. It’s just bliss.
Peter Kane Dufault's
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Please don't kick me over
Adam Gillam
please don't kick me over", 2012
120 x 70 x 2cms
Conti board, string and marker pen
Source: www.adamgillam.com
Living Revolution : How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the '1 Percent'
While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.
Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbo will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.
Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.
In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.
When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.
In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.
The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!
The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.
The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.
Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.
By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.
This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)
Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.
Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.
Text By George Lakey, January 25, 2012
Source : http://wagingnonviolence.org.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”
A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.
Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbo will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.
Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.
In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.
When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.
In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.
The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!
The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.
The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.
Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.
By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.
This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)
The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)
Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.
Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.
Text By George Lakey, January 25, 2012
Source : http://wagingnonviolence.org.
Ουτοπια
Τα νέα αποκτήµατα της συλλογής του Νίκου Χρ. Παττίχη και της εφηµερίδας «Ο Φιλελεύθερος», της οποίας είναι εκδότης, µια από τις πιο σηµαντικές συλλογές σύγχρονης τέχνης στην Κύπρο, παρουσιάζονται στο Ίδρυµα Ευαγόρα και Καθλήν Λανίτη στη Λεµεσό από τις 22 Μαρτίου µέχρι τις 17 Μαΐου. Όπως υποδηλώνει και ο τίτλος της έκθεσης «Utopia», ενώ στην προηγούµενη έκθεση της συλλογής πριν µερικά χρόνια τα έργα αντικατόπτριζαν την ενασχόληση των καλλιτεχνών και το ενδιαφέρον του συλλέκτη για τη φιγούρα και την παραστατικότητα, σε αυτή τη νέα παρουσίαση της συλλογής, η οποία εµπλουτίστηκε στο µεταξύ µε περισσότερο από τριάντα έργα, καταγράφεται η πρόθεση των καλλιτεχνών να διαπραγµατευτούν στη δουλειά τους καίρια ζητήµατα της κοινωνικοπολιτικής πραγµατικότητας του τόπου και όχι µόνον.
Η μελαγχολία της αριστεράς, 2009
Ξύλο, ακρυλικό
5.25 μέτρα ύψος
Στην έκθεση Utopia συµµετέχουν: Αντωνίου Κλίτσα, Βελώνης Κωστής, Βενέτης Χρήστος, Γιωρκάτζης Αλέξανδρος, Eramian Peter, Ιωάννου Ελίνα, Καλλής Σωτήρης, Κυριάκου Φάνος, Κώστα Κυριακή, Λάπας Γιώργος, Λοϊζίδου Μαρία, Μιχαήλ Παναγιώτης, Νεοκλέους Δηµήτρης, Οικονόµου Ελένη, Παναγιώτου Χριστόδουλος, Περικλέους Βίκυ, Πεσλίκας Πόλυς, Σωκράτους Σωκράτης, Ταλιώτης Κωνσταντίνος, Τάπας Λευτέρης, Τουµάζου Μαρία, Τεµπριώτης Πανίκος, Χαραλαµπίδης Νίκος, Χριστοδουλίδης Σάββας.
Επιμελεια Εκθεσης : Έλενα Πάρπα, Μαρία Στάθη.
Ίδρυµα Ευαγόρα και Καθλήν Λανίτη, Λεµεσός, Κυπρος.
Η μελαγχολία της αριστεράς, 2009
Ξύλο, ακρυλικό
5.25 μέτρα ύψος
Στην έκθεση Utopia συµµετέχουν: Αντωνίου Κλίτσα, Βελώνης Κωστής, Βενέτης Χρήστος, Γιωρκάτζης Αλέξανδρος, Eramian Peter, Ιωάννου Ελίνα, Καλλής Σωτήρης, Κυριάκου Φάνος, Κώστα Κυριακή, Λάπας Γιώργος, Λοϊζίδου Μαρία, Μιχαήλ Παναγιώτης, Νεοκλέους Δηµήτρης, Οικονόµου Ελένη, Παναγιώτου Χριστόδουλος, Περικλέους Βίκυ, Πεσλίκας Πόλυς, Σωκράτους Σωκράτης, Ταλιώτης Κωνσταντίνος, Τάπας Λευτέρης, Τουµάζου Μαρία, Τεµπριώτης Πανίκος, Χαραλαµπίδης Νίκος, Χριστοδουλίδης Σάββας.
Επιμελεια Εκθεσης : Έλενα Πάρπα, Μαρία Στάθη.
Ίδρυµα Ευαγόρα και Καθλήν Λανίτη, Λεµεσός, Κυπρος.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Bosco di quercie nel giardino del Quirinale
Bosco di quercie nel giardino del Quirinale, 2011
Source : paesaggioitaliano.blogspot.com
Σκιάς όναρ άνθρωπος
Λίγο μεγαλώνει των ανθρώπων η χαρά
Ξάφνου μια γνώμη αντίδικη τη συνταράζει
και τη σωριάζει καταγής
Είμαστε τα όντα μιας ημέρας
Υπάρχεις ; Δεν υπάρχεις ;
O άνθρωπος; - το όνειρο του ίσκιου.
Πινδαρος
Ξάφνου μια γνώμη αντίδικη τη συνταράζει
και τη σωριάζει καταγής
Είμαστε τα όντα μιας ημέρας
Υπάρχεις ; Δεν υπάρχεις ;
O άνθρωπος; - το όνειρο του ίσκιου.
Πινδαρος
Giardino del Quirinale già di Carlo Alberto
Municipio I, Rione II - Trevi, Roma, 2012
Epoca: XIX - XX secolo
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Lettre à Aube
Chère Écusette de Noireuil,
Au beau printemps de 1952 vous viendrez d'avoir seize ans et peut-être serez-vous tentée d'entrouvrir ce livre dont j'aime à penser qu'euphoniquement le titre vous sera porté par le vent qui courbe les aubépines... Tous les rêves, tous les espoirs, toutes les illusions danseront, j'espère, nuit et jour à la lueur de vos boucles et je ne serai sans doute plus là, moi qui ne désirerais y être que pour vous voir. Les cavaliers mystérieux et splendides passeront à toutes brides, au crépuscule, le long des ruisseaux changeants. Sous de légers voiles vert d'eau, d'un pas de somnambule une jeune fille glissera sous de hautes voûtes, où clignera seule une lampe votive. Mais les esprits des joncs, mais les chats minuscules qui font semblant de dormir dans les bagues, mais l'élégant revolver-joujou perforé du mot « Bal » vous garderont de prendre ces scènes au tragique. Quelle que soit la part jamais assez belle, ou tout autre, qui vous soit faite, je ne puis savoir.
Portrait d'Andre Breton avec sa fille Aube, 1940
Vous vous plairez à vivre, à tout attendre de l'amour. Quoi qu'il advienne d'ici que vous preniez connaissance de cette lettre - il semble que c'est l'insupposable qui doit advenir - laissez-moi penser que vous serez prête alors à incarner cette puissance éternelle de la femme, la seule devant laquelle je me sois jamais incliné. Que vous veniez de fermer un pupitre sur un monde bleu corbeau de toute fantaisie ou de vous profiler, à l'exception d'un bouquet à votre corsage, en silhouette solaire sur le mur d'une fabrique - je suis loin d'être fixé sur votre avenir laissez-moi croire que ces mots : « L'amour fou » seront un jour seuls en rapport avec votre vertige.
Julien Levy(photographer), De Deigo, David Hare, Jacqueline and Aube Breton, c. 1945
Ils ne tiendront pas leur promesse puisqu'ils ne feront que vous éclairer le mystère de votre naissance. Bien longtemps j'avais pensé que la pire folie était de donner la vie. En tout cas j'en avais voulu à ceux qui me l'avaient donnée. Il se peut que vous m'en vouliez certains jours. C'est même pourquoi j'ai choisi de vous regarder à seize ans, alors que vous ne pouvez m'en vouloir. Que dis-je, de vous regarder, mais non, d'essayer de voir par vos yeux, de me regarder par vos yeux.
Ma toute petite enfant qui n'avez que huit mois, qui souriez toujours, qui êtes faite à la fois comme le corail et la perle, vous saurez alors que tout hasard a été rigoureusement exclu de votre venue, que celle-ci s'est produite à l'heure même où elle devait se produire, ni plus tôt ni plus tard et qu'aucune ombre ne vous attendait au-dessus de votre berceau d'osier. Même l'assez grande misère qui avait été et reste la mienne, pour quelques jours faisait trêve. Cette misère, je n'étais d'ailleurs pas braqué contre elle : j'acceptais d'avoir à payer la rançon de mon non-esclavage à vie, d'acquitter le droit que je m'étais donné une fois pour toutes de n'exprimer d'autres idées que les miennes. Nous n'étions pas tant... Elle passait au loin, très embellie, presque justifiée, un peu comme dans ce qu'on a appelé, pour un peintre qui fut de vos tout premiers amis, l'époque bleue. Elle apparaissait comme la conséquence à peu près inévitable de mon refus d'en passer par ou presque tous les autres en passaient, qu'ils fussent dans un camp ou dans un autre. Cette misère, que vous ayez eu ou non le temps de la prendre en horreur, songez qu'elle n'était que le revers de la miraculeuse médaille de votre existence : moins étincelante sans elle eût été la Nuit du Tournesol.
Sylvain Itkine, Jacques Herold, Aube et Andre Breton, Villa Air Bel, hiver 1941, la corvee de bois (archives Aube Breton).
Moins étincelante puisque alors l'amour n'eût pas eu à braver tout ce qu'il bravait, puisqu'il n'eût pas eu, pour triompher, à compter en tout et pour tout sur lui-même. Peut-être était-ce d'une terrible imprudence mais c'était justement cette imprudence le plus beau joyau du coffret. Au-delà de cette imprudence ne restait qu'à en commettre une plus grande : celle de vous faire naître, celle dont vous êtes le souffle parfumé. Il fallait qu'au moins de l'une à l'autre une corde magique fût tendue, tendue à se rompre au-dessus du précipice pour que la beauté allât vous cueillir comme une impossible fleur aérienne, en s'aidant de son seul balancier.
Cette fleur, qu'un jour du moins il vous plaise de penser que vous l'êtes, que vous êtes née sans aucun contact avec le sol malheureusement non stérile de ce qu'on est convenu d'appeler « les intérêts humains ». Vous êtes issue du seul miroitement de ce qui fut assez tard pour moi l'aboutissement de la poésie à laquelle je m'étais voué dans ma jeunesse, de la poesie que j’ai continué à servir, au mépris de tout ce qui n'est pas elle. Vous vous êtes trouvée là comme par enchantement, et si jamais vous démêlez trace de tristesse dans ces paroles que pour la première fois j'adresse à vous seule, dites-vous que cet enchantement continue et continuera à ne faire qu'un avec vous, qu'il est de force à surmonter en moi tous les déchirements du coeur. Toujours et longtemps, les deux grands mots ennemis qui s'affrontent dès qu'il est question de l'amour, n'ont jamais échangé de plus aveuglants coups d'épée qu'aujourd'hui au-dessus de moi, dans un ciel tout entier comme vos yeux dont le blanc est encore si bleu. De ces mots, celui qui porte mes couleurs, même si son étoile faiblit à cette heure, même s'il doit perdre, c'est toujours. Toujours, comme dans les serments qu'exigent les jeunes filles. Toujours, comme sur le sable blanc du temps et par la grâce de cet instrument qui sert à le compter mais seulement jusqu'ici vous fascine et vous affame, réduit à un filet de lait sans fin fusant d'un sein de verre. Envers et contre tout j’aurai maintenu que ce toujours est la grande clé. Ce que j'ai aimé, que je l'aie gardé ou non, je l'aimerai toujours. Comme vous êtes appelée à souffrir aussi, je voulais en finissant ce livre vous expliquer. J'ai parlé d'un certain « point sublime » dans la montagne. Il ne fut jamais question de m'établir à demeure en ce point.
Il eût d'ailleurs, à partir de là, cessé d'être sublime et j'eusse, moi, cessé d'être un homme. Faute de pouvoir raisonnablement m'y fixer, je ne m'en suis du moins jamais écarté jusqu'à le perdre de vue, jusqu'à ne plus pouvoir le montrer. J'avais choisi d'être ce guide, je m'étais astreint en conséquence a ne pas démériter de la puissance qui, dans la direction de l'amour éternel, m'avait fait voir et accordé le privilège plus rare de faire voir. Je n'en ai jamais démérité, je n'ai jamais cessé de ne faire qu'un de la chair de l'être que j'aime et de la neige des cimes au soleil levant. De l'amour je n'ai voulu connaître que les heures de triomphe, dont je ferme ici le collier sur vous. Même la perle noire, la dernière, je suis sûr que vous comprendrez quelle faiblesse m'y attache, quel suprême espoir de conjuration j'ai mis en elle. Je ne nie pas que l'amour ait maille à partir avec la vie. Je dis qu'il doit vaincre et pour cela s'être élevé à une telle conscience poétique de lui-même que tout ce qu'il rencontre nécessairement d'hostile se fonde au foyer de sa propre gloire.
Du moins cela aura-t-il été en permanence mon grand espoir, auquel n'enlève rien l'incapacité où j'ai été quelquefois de me montrer à sa hauteur. S'il est jamais entré en composition avec un autre, je m'assure que celui-ci ne vous touche pas de moins près. Comme j'ai voulu que votre existence se connût cette raison d'être que je l'avais demandée à ce qui était pour moi, dans toute la force du terme, la beauté, dans toute la force du terme, l'amour - le nom que je vous donne en haut de cette lettre ne me rend pas seulement, sous sa forme anagrammatique, un compte charmant de votre aspect actuel puisque, bien après l'avoir inventé pour vous, je me suis aperçu que les mots qui le composent, page 66 de ce livre, m'avaient servi à caractériser l'aspect même qu'avait pris pour moi l'amour : ce doit être cela la ressemblance -j'ai voulu encore que tout ce que j'attends du devenir humain, tout ce qui, selon moi, vaut la peine de lutter pour tous et non pour un, cessât d'être une manière formelle de penser, quand elle serait la plus noble, pour se confronter à cette réalité en devenir vivant qui est vous. Je veux dire que j'ai craint, à une époque de ma vie, d'être privé du contact nécessaire, du contact humain avec ce qui serait après moi. Après moi, cette idée continue à se perdre mais se retrouve merveilleusement dans un certain tournemain que vous avez comme (et pour moi pas comme) tous les petits enfants. J'ai tant admiré, du premier jour, votre main. Elle voltigeait, le frappant presque d'inanité, autour de tout ce que j'avais tenté d'édifier intellectuellement. Cette main, quelle chose insensée et que je plains ceux qui n'ont pas eu l'occasion d'en étoiler la plus belle page d'un livre! Indigence, tout à coup, de la fleur. Il n'est que de considérer cette main pour penser que l'homme fait un état risible de ce qu'il croit savoir. Tout ce qu'il comprend d'elle est qu'elle est vraiment faite, en tous les sens, pour le mieux. Cette aspiration aveugle vers le mieux suffirait à justifier l'amour tel que je le conçois, l'amour absolu, comme seul principe de sélection physique et morale qui puisse répondre de la non-vanité du témoignage, du passage humains.
Claude Cahun, Aube Breton in rock pool
J'y songeais, non sans fièvre, en septembre 1936, seul avec vous dans ma fameuse maison inhabitable de sel gemme. J'y songeais dans l'intervalle des journaux qui relataient plus ou moins hypocritement les épisodes de la guerre civile en Espagne, des journaux derrière lesquels vous croyiez que je disparaissais pour jouer avec vous à cache-cache. Et c'était vrai aussi puisqu'à de telles minutes, l'inconscient et le conscient, sous votre forme et sous la mienne, existaient en pleine dualité tout près l'un de l'autre, se tenaient dans une ignorance totale l'une de l'autre et pourtant communiquaient à loisir par un seul fil tout-puissant qui était entre nous l'échange du regard. Certes ma vie alors ne tenait qu'à un fil. Grande était la tentation d'aller l'offrir à ceux qui, sans erreur possible et sans distinction de tendances, voulaient coûte que coûte en finir avec le vieil « ordre » fondé sur le culte de cette trinité abjecte : la famille, la patrie et la religion. Et pourtant vous me reteniez par ce fil qui est celui du bonheur, tel qu'il transparaît dans la trame du malheur même. J'aimais en vous tous les petits enfants des miliciens d'Espagne, pareils à ceux que j'avais vus courir nus dans les faubourgs de poivre de Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Puisse le sacrifice de tant de vies humaines en faire un jour des êtres heureux ! Et pourtant je ne me sentais pas le courage de vous exposer avec moi pour aider à ce que cela fût.
Andre Breton et sa fille Aube a sa droite, detail d'une photo de William Klein parue dans Vogue a l'occasion de l'exposition internationale du surrealisme, Eros, a la Galerie Cordier, 1959-1960
Qu'avant tout l'idée de famille rentre sous terre! Si j'ai aimé en vous l'accomplissement de la nécessité naturelle, c'est dans la mesure exacte où en votre personne elle n'a fait qu'une avec ce qu'était pour moi la nécessité humaine, la nécessité logique et que la conciliation de ces deux nécessités m'est toujours apparue comme la seule merveille à portée de l'homme, comme la seule chance qu'il ait d'échapper de loin en loin à la méchanceté de sa condition. Vous êtes passée du non-être à l'être en vertu d'un de ces accords réalisés qui sont les seuls pour lesquels il m'a plu d'avoir une oreille. Vous étiez donnée comme possible, comme certaine au moment même où, dans l'amour le plus sûr de lui, un homme et une femme vous voulaient.
M'éloigner de vous ! Il m'importait trop, par exemple, de vous entendre un jour répondre en toute innocence à ces questions insidieuses que les grandes personnes posent aux enfants : « Avec quoi on pense, on souffre? Comment on a su son nom, au soleil? D'où ça vient la nuit? » Comme si elles pouvaient le dire elles-mêmes ! Étant pour moi la créature humaine dans son authenticité parfaite, vous deviez contre toute vraisemblance me l'apprendre...
Je vous souhaite d'être follement aimée.
Andre Breton, « L’amour fou », 1937
Au beau printemps de 1952 vous viendrez d'avoir seize ans et peut-être serez-vous tentée d'entrouvrir ce livre dont j'aime à penser qu'euphoniquement le titre vous sera porté par le vent qui courbe les aubépines... Tous les rêves, tous les espoirs, toutes les illusions danseront, j'espère, nuit et jour à la lueur de vos boucles et je ne serai sans doute plus là, moi qui ne désirerais y être que pour vous voir. Les cavaliers mystérieux et splendides passeront à toutes brides, au crépuscule, le long des ruisseaux changeants. Sous de légers voiles vert d'eau, d'un pas de somnambule une jeune fille glissera sous de hautes voûtes, où clignera seule une lampe votive. Mais les esprits des joncs, mais les chats minuscules qui font semblant de dormir dans les bagues, mais l'élégant revolver-joujou perforé du mot « Bal » vous garderont de prendre ces scènes au tragique. Quelle que soit la part jamais assez belle, ou tout autre, qui vous soit faite, je ne puis savoir.
Portrait d'Andre Breton avec sa fille Aube, 1940
Vous vous plairez à vivre, à tout attendre de l'amour. Quoi qu'il advienne d'ici que vous preniez connaissance de cette lettre - il semble que c'est l'insupposable qui doit advenir - laissez-moi penser que vous serez prête alors à incarner cette puissance éternelle de la femme, la seule devant laquelle je me sois jamais incliné. Que vous veniez de fermer un pupitre sur un monde bleu corbeau de toute fantaisie ou de vous profiler, à l'exception d'un bouquet à votre corsage, en silhouette solaire sur le mur d'une fabrique - je suis loin d'être fixé sur votre avenir laissez-moi croire que ces mots : « L'amour fou » seront un jour seuls en rapport avec votre vertige.
Julien Levy(photographer), De Deigo, David Hare, Jacqueline and Aube Breton, c. 1945
Ils ne tiendront pas leur promesse puisqu'ils ne feront que vous éclairer le mystère de votre naissance. Bien longtemps j'avais pensé que la pire folie était de donner la vie. En tout cas j'en avais voulu à ceux qui me l'avaient donnée. Il se peut que vous m'en vouliez certains jours. C'est même pourquoi j'ai choisi de vous regarder à seize ans, alors que vous ne pouvez m'en vouloir. Que dis-je, de vous regarder, mais non, d'essayer de voir par vos yeux, de me regarder par vos yeux.
Ma toute petite enfant qui n'avez que huit mois, qui souriez toujours, qui êtes faite à la fois comme le corail et la perle, vous saurez alors que tout hasard a été rigoureusement exclu de votre venue, que celle-ci s'est produite à l'heure même où elle devait se produire, ni plus tôt ni plus tard et qu'aucune ombre ne vous attendait au-dessus de votre berceau d'osier. Même l'assez grande misère qui avait été et reste la mienne, pour quelques jours faisait trêve. Cette misère, je n'étais d'ailleurs pas braqué contre elle : j'acceptais d'avoir à payer la rançon de mon non-esclavage à vie, d'acquitter le droit que je m'étais donné une fois pour toutes de n'exprimer d'autres idées que les miennes. Nous n'étions pas tant... Elle passait au loin, très embellie, presque justifiée, un peu comme dans ce qu'on a appelé, pour un peintre qui fut de vos tout premiers amis, l'époque bleue. Elle apparaissait comme la conséquence à peu près inévitable de mon refus d'en passer par ou presque tous les autres en passaient, qu'ils fussent dans un camp ou dans un autre. Cette misère, que vous ayez eu ou non le temps de la prendre en horreur, songez qu'elle n'était que le revers de la miraculeuse médaille de votre existence : moins étincelante sans elle eût été la Nuit du Tournesol.
Sylvain Itkine, Jacques Herold, Aube et Andre Breton, Villa Air Bel, hiver 1941, la corvee de bois (archives Aube Breton).
Moins étincelante puisque alors l'amour n'eût pas eu à braver tout ce qu'il bravait, puisqu'il n'eût pas eu, pour triompher, à compter en tout et pour tout sur lui-même. Peut-être était-ce d'une terrible imprudence mais c'était justement cette imprudence le plus beau joyau du coffret. Au-delà de cette imprudence ne restait qu'à en commettre une plus grande : celle de vous faire naître, celle dont vous êtes le souffle parfumé. Il fallait qu'au moins de l'une à l'autre une corde magique fût tendue, tendue à se rompre au-dessus du précipice pour que la beauté allât vous cueillir comme une impossible fleur aérienne, en s'aidant de son seul balancier.
Cette fleur, qu'un jour du moins il vous plaise de penser que vous l'êtes, que vous êtes née sans aucun contact avec le sol malheureusement non stérile de ce qu'on est convenu d'appeler « les intérêts humains ». Vous êtes issue du seul miroitement de ce qui fut assez tard pour moi l'aboutissement de la poésie à laquelle je m'étais voué dans ma jeunesse, de la poesie que j’ai continué à servir, au mépris de tout ce qui n'est pas elle. Vous vous êtes trouvée là comme par enchantement, et si jamais vous démêlez trace de tristesse dans ces paroles que pour la première fois j'adresse à vous seule, dites-vous que cet enchantement continue et continuera à ne faire qu'un avec vous, qu'il est de force à surmonter en moi tous les déchirements du coeur. Toujours et longtemps, les deux grands mots ennemis qui s'affrontent dès qu'il est question de l'amour, n'ont jamais échangé de plus aveuglants coups d'épée qu'aujourd'hui au-dessus de moi, dans un ciel tout entier comme vos yeux dont le blanc est encore si bleu. De ces mots, celui qui porte mes couleurs, même si son étoile faiblit à cette heure, même s'il doit perdre, c'est toujours. Toujours, comme dans les serments qu'exigent les jeunes filles. Toujours, comme sur le sable blanc du temps et par la grâce de cet instrument qui sert à le compter mais seulement jusqu'ici vous fascine et vous affame, réduit à un filet de lait sans fin fusant d'un sein de verre. Envers et contre tout j’aurai maintenu que ce toujours est la grande clé. Ce que j'ai aimé, que je l'aie gardé ou non, je l'aimerai toujours. Comme vous êtes appelée à souffrir aussi, je voulais en finissant ce livre vous expliquer. J'ai parlé d'un certain « point sublime » dans la montagne. Il ne fut jamais question de m'établir à demeure en ce point.
Il eût d'ailleurs, à partir de là, cessé d'être sublime et j'eusse, moi, cessé d'être un homme. Faute de pouvoir raisonnablement m'y fixer, je ne m'en suis du moins jamais écarté jusqu'à le perdre de vue, jusqu'à ne plus pouvoir le montrer. J'avais choisi d'être ce guide, je m'étais astreint en conséquence a ne pas démériter de la puissance qui, dans la direction de l'amour éternel, m'avait fait voir et accordé le privilège plus rare de faire voir. Je n'en ai jamais démérité, je n'ai jamais cessé de ne faire qu'un de la chair de l'être que j'aime et de la neige des cimes au soleil levant. De l'amour je n'ai voulu connaître que les heures de triomphe, dont je ferme ici le collier sur vous. Même la perle noire, la dernière, je suis sûr que vous comprendrez quelle faiblesse m'y attache, quel suprême espoir de conjuration j'ai mis en elle. Je ne nie pas que l'amour ait maille à partir avec la vie. Je dis qu'il doit vaincre et pour cela s'être élevé à une telle conscience poétique de lui-même que tout ce qu'il rencontre nécessairement d'hostile se fonde au foyer de sa propre gloire.
Du moins cela aura-t-il été en permanence mon grand espoir, auquel n'enlève rien l'incapacité où j'ai été quelquefois de me montrer à sa hauteur. S'il est jamais entré en composition avec un autre, je m'assure que celui-ci ne vous touche pas de moins près. Comme j'ai voulu que votre existence se connût cette raison d'être que je l'avais demandée à ce qui était pour moi, dans toute la force du terme, la beauté, dans toute la force du terme, l'amour - le nom que je vous donne en haut de cette lettre ne me rend pas seulement, sous sa forme anagrammatique, un compte charmant de votre aspect actuel puisque, bien après l'avoir inventé pour vous, je me suis aperçu que les mots qui le composent, page 66 de ce livre, m'avaient servi à caractériser l'aspect même qu'avait pris pour moi l'amour : ce doit être cela la ressemblance -j'ai voulu encore que tout ce que j'attends du devenir humain, tout ce qui, selon moi, vaut la peine de lutter pour tous et non pour un, cessât d'être une manière formelle de penser, quand elle serait la plus noble, pour se confronter à cette réalité en devenir vivant qui est vous. Je veux dire que j'ai craint, à une époque de ma vie, d'être privé du contact nécessaire, du contact humain avec ce qui serait après moi. Après moi, cette idée continue à se perdre mais se retrouve merveilleusement dans un certain tournemain que vous avez comme (et pour moi pas comme) tous les petits enfants. J'ai tant admiré, du premier jour, votre main. Elle voltigeait, le frappant presque d'inanité, autour de tout ce que j'avais tenté d'édifier intellectuellement. Cette main, quelle chose insensée et que je plains ceux qui n'ont pas eu l'occasion d'en étoiler la plus belle page d'un livre! Indigence, tout à coup, de la fleur. Il n'est que de considérer cette main pour penser que l'homme fait un état risible de ce qu'il croit savoir. Tout ce qu'il comprend d'elle est qu'elle est vraiment faite, en tous les sens, pour le mieux. Cette aspiration aveugle vers le mieux suffirait à justifier l'amour tel que je le conçois, l'amour absolu, comme seul principe de sélection physique et morale qui puisse répondre de la non-vanité du témoignage, du passage humains.
Claude Cahun, Aube Breton in rock pool
J'y songeais, non sans fièvre, en septembre 1936, seul avec vous dans ma fameuse maison inhabitable de sel gemme. J'y songeais dans l'intervalle des journaux qui relataient plus ou moins hypocritement les épisodes de la guerre civile en Espagne, des journaux derrière lesquels vous croyiez que je disparaissais pour jouer avec vous à cache-cache. Et c'était vrai aussi puisqu'à de telles minutes, l'inconscient et le conscient, sous votre forme et sous la mienne, existaient en pleine dualité tout près l'un de l'autre, se tenaient dans une ignorance totale l'une de l'autre et pourtant communiquaient à loisir par un seul fil tout-puissant qui était entre nous l'échange du regard. Certes ma vie alors ne tenait qu'à un fil. Grande était la tentation d'aller l'offrir à ceux qui, sans erreur possible et sans distinction de tendances, voulaient coûte que coûte en finir avec le vieil « ordre » fondé sur le culte de cette trinité abjecte : la famille, la patrie et la religion. Et pourtant vous me reteniez par ce fil qui est celui du bonheur, tel qu'il transparaît dans la trame du malheur même. J'aimais en vous tous les petits enfants des miliciens d'Espagne, pareils à ceux que j'avais vus courir nus dans les faubourgs de poivre de Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Puisse le sacrifice de tant de vies humaines en faire un jour des êtres heureux ! Et pourtant je ne me sentais pas le courage de vous exposer avec moi pour aider à ce que cela fût.
Andre Breton et sa fille Aube a sa droite, detail d'une photo de William Klein parue dans Vogue a l'occasion de l'exposition internationale du surrealisme, Eros, a la Galerie Cordier, 1959-1960
Qu'avant tout l'idée de famille rentre sous terre! Si j'ai aimé en vous l'accomplissement de la nécessité naturelle, c'est dans la mesure exacte où en votre personne elle n'a fait qu'une avec ce qu'était pour moi la nécessité humaine, la nécessité logique et que la conciliation de ces deux nécessités m'est toujours apparue comme la seule merveille à portée de l'homme, comme la seule chance qu'il ait d'échapper de loin en loin à la méchanceté de sa condition. Vous êtes passée du non-être à l'être en vertu d'un de ces accords réalisés qui sont les seuls pour lesquels il m'a plu d'avoir une oreille. Vous étiez donnée comme possible, comme certaine au moment même où, dans l'amour le plus sûr de lui, un homme et une femme vous voulaient.
M'éloigner de vous ! Il m'importait trop, par exemple, de vous entendre un jour répondre en toute innocence à ces questions insidieuses que les grandes personnes posent aux enfants : « Avec quoi on pense, on souffre? Comment on a su son nom, au soleil? D'où ça vient la nuit? » Comme si elles pouvaient le dire elles-mêmes ! Étant pour moi la créature humaine dans son authenticité parfaite, vous deviez contre toute vraisemblance me l'apprendre...
Je vous souhaite d'être follement aimée.
Andre Breton, « L’amour fou », 1937
When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yeats, 1893
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
William Butler Yeats, 1893
Thursday, February 16, 2012
The Great Reynard
The Ventriloquist Entertainer Ed Reynard was also known as Edward Sharpless and The Great Reynard. Famous Routine: Morning in Hicksville. c. 1880s -- United States
Source : www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Life without Tragedy
Untitled (life without tragedy), 2011
Ceramics, plywood, wood, acrylic
33 x 31 x 34 cm
Guy Fawkes
George Cruikshank's illustration of Guy Fawkes,
published in William Harrison Ainsworth's 1840 novel.
Viewpoint: V for Vendetta and the rise of Anonymous
On Saturday protests are planned across the world against Acta - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty has become the focus of activists associated with the Anonymous hacking network because of concerns that it could undermine internet privacy and aid censorship.
First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character.
Ahead of the protests, the BBC asked V for Vendetta's writer, Alan Moore, for his thoughts on how his creation had become an inspiration and identity to Anonymous.
Preoccupations
Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire, and the adoption of the V for Vendetta mask as a multipurpose icon by the emerging global protest movements is no exception.
Back at the crack of the 17th century, Rushton Triangular Lodge was a strange architectural folly constructed to represent the Holy Trinity by an increasingly eccentric Sir Thomas Tresham while he endured decades of house-arrest for his outspoken Catholicism.
Rushton Triangular Lodge appears in Mr Moore's novel Voice of the Fire
It was also one of the two locations, both owned by Tresham and both in Northamptonshire, at which the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was formulated by a group of dissident Catholics that included Tresham's son Francis.
It would seem likely that the treatment afforded to the elder Tresham played some part in the general mix of grievances from which the reckless scheme ignited.
Mastermind
By the early sixteen-hundreds, the bonfires traditionally lit around the start of November had been co-opted as trappings for a sort of national anti-Catholic day at which effigies of the Pope would be incinerated.
As mastermind behind the terrorist outrage du jour, however, the plot's nominal leader Guido Fawkes rapidly replaced the pontiff as hate-mascot of choice on these occasions.
Jump forward 300 years, though, to the battered post-war England of the 1950s, and the saturnine insurrectionary had taken on more ambiguous connotations.
When parents explained to their offspring about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up Parliament, there always seemed to be an undertone of admiration in their voices, or at least there did in Northampton.
The series was published as a graphic novel in 1988
While that era's children perhaps didn't see Fawkes as a hero, they certainly didn't see him as the villainous scapegoat he'd originally been intended as.
Revolutionary
At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes' status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip's creation: it was the strip's artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.
When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.
To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.
It was also the year in which the term "Guy Fawkes Night" seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative 'bonfire night'.
At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn't keep a good symbol down
If there truly was government unease about the mask and its associations back in the 1980s, these concerns had evidently evaporated by the first decade of the 21st century, when the movie industry apparently decided to re-imagine the original narrative as some sort of parable about the post-9/11 rise of American neo-conservatives, in which the words "fascism" or "anarchy" were nowhere mentioned.
Anarchy and romance
When the film was made during the peak period of anti-terrorist legislation the golden touch of Hollywood was, it seemed, sufficiently persuasive for the authorities to permit a massed horde of extras dressed as the nation's most famous terrorist to cavort riotously in Parliament Square.
I don't think one need subscribe to any quasi-mystical theories about how the conceptual world of ideas can affect the substantial world of everyday existence in order to agree that, in retrospect, this could be seen as practically begging for it.
After that, it wasn't long before the character's enigmatic Time-Warner trademarked leer appeared masking the faces of Anonymous protesters barracking Scientologists halfway down Tottenham Court Road.
Shortly thereafter it began manifesting at anti-globalisation demonstrations, anti-capitalist protests, concerted hacker-attacks upon those perceived as enabling state oppression, and finally on the front steps of St Paul's.
It would seem that the various tectonic collapses deep in the structure of our economic and political systems have triggered waves of kinetic energy which are rolling through human populations rather than through their usual medium of seawater.
It also seems that our character's charismatic grin has provided a ready-made identity for these highly motivated protesters, one embodying resonances of anarchy, romance, and theatre that are clearly well-suited to contemporary activism, from Madrid's Indignados to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
V's takeover of a TV broadcast has been echoed by Anonymous' many hack attacks
Neglect
Our present financial ethos no longer even resembles conventional capitalism, which at least implies a brutal Darwinian free-for-all, however one-sided and unfair. Instead, we have a situation where the banks seem to be an untouchable monarchy beyond the reach of governmental restraint, much like the profligate court of Charles I.
Then, a depraved neglect of the poor and the "squeezed middle" led inexorably to an unanticipated reaction in the horrific form of Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War which, as it happens, was bloodily concluded in Northamptonshire.
V masks were a common sight at a recent anti-Acta demonstration in Poland
Today's response to similar oppressions seems to be one that is intelligent, constantly evolving and considerably more humane, and yet our character's borrowed Catholic revolutionary visage and his incongruously Puritan apparel are perhaps a reminder that unjust institutions may always be haunted by volatile 17th century spectres, even if today's uprisings are fuelled more by social networks than by gunpowder.
Some ghosts never go away.
V masks were a common sight at a recent anti-Acta demonstration in Poland
As for the ideas tentatively proposed in that dystopian fantasy thirty years ago, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that whatever usefulness they afford modern radicalism is very satisfying.
In terms of a wildly uninformed guess at our political future, it feels something like V for validation.
Text by Alan Moore, 10 February
Source : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology
First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character.
Ahead of the protests, the BBC asked V for Vendetta's writer, Alan Moore, for his thoughts on how his creation had become an inspiration and identity to Anonymous.
Preoccupations
Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire, and the adoption of the V for Vendetta mask as a multipurpose icon by the emerging global protest movements is no exception.
Back at the crack of the 17th century, Rushton Triangular Lodge was a strange architectural folly constructed to represent the Holy Trinity by an increasingly eccentric Sir Thomas Tresham while he endured decades of house-arrest for his outspoken Catholicism.
Rushton Triangular Lodge appears in Mr Moore's novel Voice of the Fire
It was also one of the two locations, both owned by Tresham and both in Northamptonshire, at which the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was formulated by a group of dissident Catholics that included Tresham's son Francis.
It would seem likely that the treatment afforded to the elder Tresham played some part in the general mix of grievances from which the reckless scheme ignited.
Mastermind
By the early sixteen-hundreds, the bonfires traditionally lit around the start of November had been co-opted as trappings for a sort of national anti-Catholic day at which effigies of the Pope would be incinerated.
As mastermind behind the terrorist outrage du jour, however, the plot's nominal leader Guido Fawkes rapidly replaced the pontiff as hate-mascot of choice on these occasions.
Jump forward 300 years, though, to the battered post-war England of the 1950s, and the saturnine insurrectionary had taken on more ambiguous connotations.
When parents explained to their offspring about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up Parliament, there always seemed to be an undertone of admiration in their voices, or at least there did in Northampton.
The series was published as a graphic novel in 1988
While that era's children perhaps didn't see Fawkes as a hero, they certainly didn't see him as the villainous scapegoat he'd originally been intended as.
Revolutionary
At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes' status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip's creation: it was the strip's artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.
When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.
To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.
It was also the year in which the term "Guy Fawkes Night" seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative 'bonfire night'.
At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn't keep a good symbol down
If there truly was government unease about the mask and its associations back in the 1980s, these concerns had evidently evaporated by the first decade of the 21st century, when the movie industry apparently decided to re-imagine the original narrative as some sort of parable about the post-9/11 rise of American neo-conservatives, in which the words "fascism" or "anarchy" were nowhere mentioned.
Anarchy and romance
When the film was made during the peak period of anti-terrorist legislation the golden touch of Hollywood was, it seemed, sufficiently persuasive for the authorities to permit a massed horde of extras dressed as the nation's most famous terrorist to cavort riotously in Parliament Square.
I don't think one need subscribe to any quasi-mystical theories about how the conceptual world of ideas can affect the substantial world of everyday existence in order to agree that, in retrospect, this could be seen as practically begging for it.
After that, it wasn't long before the character's enigmatic Time-Warner trademarked leer appeared masking the faces of Anonymous protesters barracking Scientologists halfway down Tottenham Court Road.
Shortly thereafter it began manifesting at anti-globalisation demonstrations, anti-capitalist protests, concerted hacker-attacks upon those perceived as enabling state oppression, and finally on the front steps of St Paul's.
It would seem that the various tectonic collapses deep in the structure of our economic and political systems have triggered waves of kinetic energy which are rolling through human populations rather than through their usual medium of seawater.
It also seems that our character's charismatic grin has provided a ready-made identity for these highly motivated protesters, one embodying resonances of anarchy, romance, and theatre that are clearly well-suited to contemporary activism, from Madrid's Indignados to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
V's takeover of a TV broadcast has been echoed by Anonymous' many hack attacks
Neglect
Our present financial ethos no longer even resembles conventional capitalism, which at least implies a brutal Darwinian free-for-all, however one-sided and unfair. Instead, we have a situation where the banks seem to be an untouchable monarchy beyond the reach of governmental restraint, much like the profligate court of Charles I.
Then, a depraved neglect of the poor and the "squeezed middle" led inexorably to an unanticipated reaction in the horrific form of Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War which, as it happens, was bloodily concluded in Northamptonshire.
V masks were a common sight at a recent anti-Acta demonstration in Poland
Today's response to similar oppressions seems to be one that is intelligent, constantly evolving and considerably more humane, and yet our character's borrowed Catholic revolutionary visage and his incongruously Puritan apparel are perhaps a reminder that unjust institutions may always be haunted by volatile 17th century spectres, even if today's uprisings are fuelled more by social networks than by gunpowder.
Some ghosts never go away.
V masks were a common sight at a recent anti-Acta demonstration in Poland
As for the ideas tentatively proposed in that dystopian fantasy thirty years ago, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that whatever usefulness they afford modern radicalism is very satisfying.
In terms of a wildly uninformed guess at our political future, it feels something like V for validation.
Text by Alan Moore, 10 February
Source : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology
Friday, February 10, 2012
Real Estate
Presentation - Numero #3 / Le Catalogue Immobilier « DYSTOPIQUE »
Undo-Redo publie le nouveau numéro de la revue MADE IN CHINA le 17 février prochain.
L'objet revue se présente cette fois sous forme d'un improbable Catalogue immobilier 2030-2031.
19 artistes ont imaginé des modules d'habitation dystopiques (ironiques, cyniques, voire impraticables) pour les locataires du futur.
Parodie du marché immobilier actuel, où l'on joue à pile ou face notre droit au logement, et où on nous demande de gagner, de troquer, ou de jouer au hasard le moindre confort de nos habitations, une grande fête foraine accueillera dans l'atelier Undo-Redo tous les locataires prêts à conquérir par des épreuves d'habilité, de rapidité, voire d'effort physique leur chance d'être encore logé en ville d'ici 20 ans.
Oeuvres et textes par
Jay Batlle / Cecilia Braschi / Andrea Chiesi / Jeremy Edwards / Viola Ferby / Panos Kouros / Aspassia Kouzoupi / Sébastien Lallemand / Eric Mitchell / Emanuele Sferruzza Moszkowicz / Florence Muller / Marino Neri / Massimo Polvara / Ronan Riou / Matt Root / Vanessa Théodoropoulou / Undo-Redo / Frédéric Vaesen / Goran Vejvoda / Kostis Velonis
Disparition de Pascal Häusermann
“Architecte suisse, Pascal Häusermann, né en 1936, nous a quittés le 1er novembre 2011, à Madras, en Inde. Il ne pensait qu’à la liberté de l’homme, sous toutes ses formes. Il avait une confiance totale en lui. Il voulait que chacun habite un logement individuel et surtout qu’il soit le moins cher possible. Un jour, je lui demande : si je vous commande une belle maison et que j’ai énormément d’argent, vous me faites quoi ? Il me répond : rien, absolument rien de plus que si vous n’avez pas d’argent.
Pour lui, la maison devait ressembler à une voiture : industrialisée mais avec plusieurs modèles, mobile et modulable, un objet de consommation courante et surtout pas un investissement pérenne. J’ai toujours été fasciné par cette idée totalement à contre-courant. Je lui disais : mais l’homme veut tout le contraire de cette idée. Il cherche à s’enraciner et investir ! Imperturbable, il me rappelait que l’homme est formaté par la société pour perdre sa liberté et que lui, en tant qu’architecte, devait lui offrir la possibilité de choisir et s’échapper de ces contraintes. Il avait des idées révolutionnaires. Comme faire des habitations en plastique, pour pouvoir les démonter, les mettre sur un camion et les remonter plus loin. Ou encore les faire en voiles de béton, soi-même, ou en plastique. Et puis ses maisons étaient rondes, puisqu’il fallait trouver la forme la plus économique. Il n’aimait pas les transports en commun, pour lui ça ressemblait trop aux logements collectifs. Individualiste forcené, il voulait que la collectivité existe grâce aux règles inventées par les habitants et non pas celles qu’on leur impose.
Un jour, il me raconte qu’en Inde, des habitants relogés dans de petits immeubles confortables suite à la destruction de leur bidonville, en récréaient un nouveau, juste à côté de leur nouvel habitat qu’ils sous-louaient. La municipalité l’appelait à la rescousse parce qu’elle prenait conscience que ces gens avaient l’habitude de vivre en organisant leur propre urbanisme, et parce qu’Haüsermann, lui, pouvait proposer un compromis modulable et propre à une population qui ne connaissait pas la vie dans le logement collectif. Finalement cela n’a pas marché. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Mais le désordre apparent de l’Inde lui convenait très bien, lui l’architecte suisse qui ne croyait pas à la poétique de l’angle droit…”
Text par Julien Donada
Source: http://avivreleblog.wordpress.com,le 5 janvier 2012.
Pour en savoir plus
- « Bulles Cosmiques », Architectures à vivre n°55, pp.116 – 127, consacré à la maison ardéchoise en voile de béton de Pascal et Claude Häusermann.
- Julien Donada, La bulle et l’architecte, TS Productions / Voi Sénart, 2003, DVD.
- Julien Donada, Bulles, conversation avec Pascal Häusermann, Bruxelles, éditions du facteur humain, 2010.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Glenn Gould on Sviatoslav Richter
Glenn Gould on Sviatoslav Richter, and in particular his interpretation of Schubert.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Story of Klement Tchtatelnikov
This interview took place back in January on the occasion of the exhibition of Stephanos Kamaris at the Cheap Art Gallery in Athens, 7/2-9/3/2012. The interview is also published in an exhibition catalogue by the editions Futura, 2012.
Kostis Velonis - You engage with the Soviet past, while being aware of both sides. There is, indeed, a good side, that of those who resisted Stalin’s hell, through poetry and the various ingenious inventions of escape, as in the case of your hero, K. Tchtatelnikov.
Stephanos Kamaris - When I built my first wish-machine several years ago, I didn’t know anything about all that - and I still don’t. I placed a plexiglass lid on the machine and then thought of adding a label: “Wish-machine. Found in ... (date) in the frozen lands of Siberia. Considered to be the Soviet answer to Aladdin’s lamp.” I suppose I just really liked Cyrillic letters, both visually and due to that lovely mystery they create - you can understand a bit (it’s not Chinese, say), but not enough. More generally, it must also be due to that rather strange sensation that Russian history inspires, it may also be due to the various odd objects I used to see in my grandmother’s house, or even the badges and handkerchiefs my godfather used to give me when I was small - my other grandfather went on to use the handkerchiefs, when he and my grandmother still visited Greece, for cleaning shoes and other items. I think that this last detail (and the combination in general) may explain quite a lot (not to go into family matters) and is probably the reason why I can view this Soviet past more easily and critically, but also relatively cheerfully. But it’s their fault too, I mean it’s not just my impression that these Soviet objects were often very amusing and identified with self-destruction. I can think of quite a few. In any case, this story gradually took on its present form - and perhaps it was logical that it should take this direction - once the word “Siberia” appeared on the first label. The first wish-machines, however, were intended to throw coins into a well I’d built.
Stephanos Kamaris "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Magic Machine/ Icarus II", circa 1929 (80x50x40 cm)
K.Velonis- Your morphological undertaking has to do with the attempt to gather and ultimately group together narrative “utilitarian” objects in an oppositional relationship between Tchtatelnikov and Bozov. Good versus evil, which can also be a complementary relationship.
S.Kamaris- Certainly. In one of the boxes containing the personal items of the two protagonists, you can see a large pair of scissors. There I mention that the scissors once belonged to Bozov, who was a very good friend of Tchtatelnikov until he discovered that Tchtatelnikov had stolen them. So this great conflict is sparked off by this incident, with Bozov taking on the role of the bad guy more out of obstinacy than anything else. But as the story unfolds, I find Bozov becoming more and more likeable, because despite his medals and his obvious copying of his former friend’s wish-machine with the prescribed-wish machine (the one with the hammer-and-sickle that stops at an ex-voto), for me he is the truly unhappy one. And I thought of restoring his honour somehow... by having him commit suicide, or suddenly become paranoid at some gathering and start to shoot officers indiscriminately and so on. But anyway, yes, here he roughly symbolises evil, but I deliberately gave him a round and rather funny face, because I probably want him to be saved too.
K.V- While the plot of your work and the consistency of your materials is reminiscent of the atmosphere of a Dostoyevsky, Gorky or Solzhenitsyn novel, the way in which you remake your relationship with the material has a wider cultural significance; sometimes it even makes me think of the California School, for instance the assemblage guru Edward Kienholz.
S.K -I’m getting quite embarrassed now, as, after my ignorance of Soviet history, my ignorance of art and sculpture history is revealed. I might say that my excuse is that I supposedly studied painting, while my first work was probably on comics... That’s gone now, but anyway, I’ve just looked at Kienholz, I knew a few of his works (mainly the one with the pinball machine), and I can make out the affinities you mentioned. I only wish I could make things like that one day, though to be honest I’ve no idea what direction I might take in future. But I see a rather caustic mood in his work, and a mixture of different materials which I find quite familiar. Due to my origins, my dual nationality if you will, and the various disparate stimuli I received growing up, I often feel closer to certain foreign artists. The Balkan or the oriental element, so to say, are much more foreign to me, even though I’ve lived here in Greece almost my whole life. So maybe thanks to this rather fresh, if I can call it that, multiculturalism which distinguishes American history, I can more easily find affinities with artists there - when, of course, there are also affinities in character and way of thinking... I’m probably just talking at random. Never mind.
Stephanos Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Wish Monument", circa 1929 (120x70x50cm)
K.V- It’s probably not very important whether you know your “spiritual” relatives or not; once some possible similarities arise due to idiosyncrasy and common cultural references, it is inevitable that this story of genealogy will be repeated ad infinitum even if you or anybody else is disinclined to take it seriously. Do you believe that the viewer has the right to perceive your sculpture exclusively in static terms, as a composition in which he does not need to perceive the mechanical movement? Because in all your constructions there is always the ghost of a structure in progress, an imminent event, due to the fact that they are constructions that can offer movement, like the wish-machines for example, and also their noise when they are put into operation.
S.K- What I realise, and really makes me think, is that I’m not at all sure of my works. I don’t know if they can stand up if I remove all this history, if I remove the glass boxes and labels. But there again, I like writing and making up mythologies, I mean to say that I have never used anything with an ulterior motive, to conceal some other weakness. As to the other thing, what you’re probably really asking, I’m afraid the answer’s yes. But unfortunately, I too have got used to them being motionless and soundless, mainly for practical reasons. The machines are particularly sensitive, so half the time when I put them into operation something goes wrong and they won’t work. And even when they do, I stop them quickly because I’m afraid the worst might happen. Sometimes they seem to be avenging themselves for all the previous failed attempts and start speeding up exponentially. At least with the Antimachine, for example, I know that I can’t leave it on by definition, because - if it works - in about a minute (more or less) it will have sawn through its base and become something else. Also, in “Me and Bozov #2 and 3” (I gave it two numbers because I thought the character could change depending on the side it’s viewed from), the combustion construction, I made sure it was inoperable from the start (which wasn’t difficult), to avoid causing any damage. And you’re quite right about the noise you mention. Unfortunately though, purely for practical reasons of the machines’ survival, I can’t have them working for more than a very short time.
Stephanos Kamaris "Vitaliy Bozov - “Ready-Wish Machine”, also known as the “commissioned wish machine”, circa 1930.
K.V- Observing your constructions, I am tempted to find some analogies with modern art history, particularly a pioneering view that envisioned the application of science and engineering to sculpture, for example the industrial universe of kinetic sculpture.
S.K- I would love to have the knowledge to be able to combine science and art, but unfortunately I can’t. Of course, even there I believe that something always predominates. Searching for influences, I think first of Da Vinci, who was always been my favourite hero. But physics and chemistry were lessons I was always extremely bad at, although I would have liked it to be otherwise. All these machines are based mostly on the conversion of circular into linear motion, just as we see in train wheels, in the way they are connected. There’s nothing clever about them (I mean my own machines). I don’t think Tinguely influenced me either, as I wasn’t aware of him when I started building the machines. Duchamp probably did, and so did the famous German band Einstürzende Neubauten, with the various crazy instruments made by its members.
I’ve just remembered a small photograph I once saw in an art history book. It must have been by Giacometti, a very simple and beautiful structure, something like a male-female, with a sort of banana if I remember right, revolving or going up and down over a sphere - without an engine - but probably perpetually. That has certainly influenced me subconsciously in the construction with the theoretical combustion - where Klement Tchtatelnikov as a sphere with matches moves towards a revolving pyramid with sandpaper rings - Bozov. In two more works, again, the wish-machine with the rat built by Tchtatelnikov in prison and the Antimachine, in the little red sticks bearing the razor blades, I think I’ve been influenced by your own works.
K.V- You are referring to the best-known photographic version of the “Suspended Ball” in the Guggenheim Museum, from what I believe is Giacometti’s most creative period, before he became identified with his famous thin, elongated Impressionist figures. This playful mood of a metaphysics of mechanics which is common to you and to his early work, helps me to better apprehend a sort of Dadaist transcendence in your work, with technological know-how being used in order to be refuted, to lead from the invention to its ridicule, something which is evident in the construction with the sphere of matches moving towards the revolving sandpaper pyramid.
S.Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Wish-Machine № 5" (/Rat Machine),found in Solovki, where Klement Tchtatelnikov spent 8 years as a prisoner
S.K -Yes, that’s the one I meant, I hadn’t seen it since then and I still love it. Now, as regards the machines... They really do have something comical and ridiculous about them... But I’d better start at the beginning, with the completely useless and malfunctioning wish-machines, which just push a few coins, without of course being able to fulfil their promises. The starting-point was the habit, probably human above all (?), of dreaming and wishing for something better. When we throw a coin in the water and wish for something. I love this habit... maybe visually too, with the metal and the water. And it’s something that never stops. As a priest says, probably in 8½, we didn’t come into this world to be happy. With the “wish monument” - which does not have any mechanical function - I am also referring to this last, drawing a parallel with the wishes we make on falling stars: in this work, the wish-stars which have been fulfilled are essentially dead, as they have a bullet in their centre. So although this should normally have been a work symbolising happiness, it’s a common graveyard. But on the right we see a new star appearing again, and we start over... On the other hand, the inability of these machines to fulfil their promises clearly has something human and vulnerable about it. And from a political point of view, one could contrast these machines with the faceless and terrifying Communist regime. For me, in other words, these machines are more human than the supposedly joyful faces we see in Soviet propaganda posters. They are certainly machines, but machines running in reverse...
Let me refer here to the “Antimachine”, since you mentioned transcendence. This machine, whose concept, to be honest, seems far too simple for me not to have copied it from somewhere else - even if unconsciously - is a machine that becomes detached from itself. It is supported solely on a couple of springs and gnaws away at itself, or at least at its truly mechanical part, that which has nothing human about it, until it finally falls and is released from it. I’d originally given it a second title, “Scorpion Committing Suicide”. I’d also written a short poem (in English and then I developed it a bit), along the lines of:
Two insects dream of their future helmets,
I’ll be an astronaut, says the ant,
I’ll be a fireman, says the scorpion.
Something like that... So there goes the scorpion... But I finally decided that this was all wrong, because the Antimachine probably doesn’t commit suicide. It’s rather that it kills one of its selves, the purely mechanical one. In any case the title “Antimachine” is fairly appropriate and I think it’s enough. Now I think the poem was wrong too, as the scorpion might have achieved its transcendence, but then it would have had to be called “The Scorpion’s Revenge”, which I wouldn’t have liked at all.
K.V-The beginning of the poem is amazing... but let’s move on to the other works. The contest between Bozov and Tchtatelnikov in a final chess game with quite radically altered rules. What does this difference in the rules constitute? Evolution, revolution or sabotage?
S.K- Thank you very much... These different rules are obviously sabotage against Klement Tchtatelnikov, but one that he is probably responsible for, since I don’t think the game was ever played - I don’t think even Bozov himself would have agreed to play on such favourable terms, with over twice as many pawns and roughly an extra 4 points. Obviously the knight in chess is identified with the unexpected, with freedom (as opposed to the bishop of the same value, for example, which is a tower that moves diagonally), and therefore with the revolution. One could also say this of the pawn, since this is the only piece - with a lot of work, of course - which has the magical property of transformation. Practically, however, as any chess-player knows, the pawn always turns into a queen (like some powerful trade unionists). So I chose to use it basically for Bozov’s needs, as two rows of pawns would give him a sense of safety to start with, and of course he could also sacrifice many of them as required. So we have six knights versus two rooks, four bishops and another eight pawns, which probably means admitting defeat in advance - so this game expresses a more general futility. I tried to make them both play as well as possible (or at least make Bozov play relatively tolerably), and the fact that the game managed to reach 33 moves shows that there may have been some small hope for Klement Tchtatelnikov. The title, apart from the obvious political references, also refers to the “Evergreen Game”, an actual game played between Anderssen and Dufresne in 1852 which has gone down in history for its beauty.
Klement Tchtatelnikov - Me and Bozov # 2&3, circa 1945 (30x33x18cm)
K.V- Tchtatelnikov is recognised as a humble mortal who will be glorified for his ingenuity, his resourcefulness and, finally, his actual sense of humour, which sometimes makes the human race seem likeable. In fact, however, in the gulags there was no intention among all those thousands of dissidents of having a heroic and glorious death.
Does your own antihero represent these souls consciously, as far as you are concerned, or do you limit yourself to the requirements of the narrative? What is your ideological position?
S.K- Although I haven’t read any books on the subject, I did glance at Appelbaum’s on the Internet and bought the encyclopaedia of Russian prison tattoos (2 and 3), and I also remember I saw a book on eBay referring to plays being put on in Solovki Gulag itself. From the tattoo books I learnt that political prisoners were tortured by various common murderers, etc., with the blessings of the guards. And that the usual term for political dissidents was eight years. That’s what Tchtatelnikov got. Since, as I told you, I knew nothing about the subject, I wanted to avoid something completely simplistic like “he was sent to the gulag and died there”. From what I read, many people managed to survive. In a museum in Riga I also saw various beautiful objects made by inmates, and I thought that maybe - depending on the circumstances and at least in secret - someone might be able to make something while he was a prisoner. And of course it suited the story itself that Klement Tchtatelnikov should get out of there alive, so he would be able to refer to his experiences afterwards. (I’ve also thought of sending him to America to make completely different works, or to Uruguay where he could have, unbeknown to him, a former Nazi for a neighbour - more for fun than anything else).
Now, to answer the question, I won’t say anything groundbreaking: I’m in favour of freedom of the individual, and in favour of honesty, in a rather vague and general way. I don’t know if there are any perfect systems of government, but I do know that there is always a huge gap between theory and practice. I could call myself a leftist, but again I don’t know; all that requires a consistency that I haven’t got, and I don’t know whether people like me should appropriate the term just because it sounds good. And when I see certain public figures, especially, trying to identify themselves with the left, just making a noise, while their whole life’s attitude is based on abuse of power, I get really annoyed. So I’d better not say anything. If I talk about anarchism, maybe again it’s just a convenient word which can be applied to anything, and in my case means simply opportunism in a supposedly revolutionary wrapping. I really don’t know how to answer at all. If, of course, I didn’t think there was something good in the Communist system, I wouldn’t bother with it or criticise it. I mean to say, I wouldn’t be as interested in portraying a comparable case of a hero in the Nazi regime. There, I think things would be much simpler, and the potential hero would immediately be a superhero... So I was interested in this coexistence of good and evil, not in evil in its pure form. That, again, may sound pro-Stalinist... What can I say, I’m against all those organised situations...
K.V- With your myth-making you are sharing your knowledge of a man’s past, as though you were responsible for preserving and finally exhibiting his personal archive. By this choice you are undermining, at least theoretically, your own quality of creator, since the executor of the work is K. Tchtatelnikov himself and, in a few cases, Bozov. Apart from the special circumstances of the concept of the group, which demand distancing as a technique for better utilisation of the narrative, might there also be other reasons for this?
Stephanos Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov – Tchtatelnikov Square Model", 1/15 scale, circa 1929 (30x35x40 cm)
S.K -All right, I think this undermining is quite theoretical, as you say. But I must admit that I felt quite strange when, in one of the first versions of Klement Tchtatelnikov’s self-portrait after the gulag - the door with many eyes - I signed with his initials at the bottom… The initials have now been removed, though for aesthetic reasons. Certainly the answer requires a lot of psychoanalysis… Because it’s not the first time I’ve done something like this, and it can’t just be chance. As I told you before, I used to work - as a complete amateur - on comics. The technical part of my degree dissertation at the School of Fine Arts in Italy was entitled “The signature of Matthew Longthroat”. It was the story of a failed (at least until the final page, when things are reversed) artist, who was ashamed to sign his works, and who, whenever he did, quickly regretted it and erased his signature. I am very emotionally attached to this story, particularly the last panel. Later I also tried to write a novel, which I abandoned after some time. The hero was, again, a painter, but a relatively well-known one - as opposed to the previous hero. The plot, of course, was rather far-fetched - the painter had three secret pseudonyms (and identities), and a younger half-sister (with whom he had of course lost touch), who knew one of them because the hero had used it in the paintings he used to draw for her when they were both small. Things were so twisted that another, fourth identity of the hero was that of an art critic who constantly abused him in his reviews... So I think all this could do with psychoanalysis. It must be some sort of persecution complex. Perhaps I’m trying, out of fear or embarrassment, to find a somewhat safe point between creation and criticism, although these concepts are peculiarly relative and mutually inclusive to some degree in each case...
Kostis Velonis - You engage with the Soviet past, while being aware of both sides. There is, indeed, a good side, that of those who resisted Stalin’s hell, through poetry and the various ingenious inventions of escape, as in the case of your hero, K. Tchtatelnikov.
Stephanos Kamaris - When I built my first wish-machine several years ago, I didn’t know anything about all that - and I still don’t. I placed a plexiglass lid on the machine and then thought of adding a label: “Wish-machine. Found in ... (date) in the frozen lands of Siberia. Considered to be the Soviet answer to Aladdin’s lamp.” I suppose I just really liked Cyrillic letters, both visually and due to that lovely mystery they create - you can understand a bit (it’s not Chinese, say), but not enough. More generally, it must also be due to that rather strange sensation that Russian history inspires, it may also be due to the various odd objects I used to see in my grandmother’s house, or even the badges and handkerchiefs my godfather used to give me when I was small - my other grandfather went on to use the handkerchiefs, when he and my grandmother still visited Greece, for cleaning shoes and other items. I think that this last detail (and the combination in general) may explain quite a lot (not to go into family matters) and is probably the reason why I can view this Soviet past more easily and critically, but also relatively cheerfully. But it’s their fault too, I mean it’s not just my impression that these Soviet objects were often very amusing and identified with self-destruction. I can think of quite a few. In any case, this story gradually took on its present form - and perhaps it was logical that it should take this direction - once the word “Siberia” appeared on the first label. The first wish-machines, however, were intended to throw coins into a well I’d built.
Stephanos Kamaris "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Magic Machine/ Icarus II", circa 1929 (80x50x40 cm)
K.Velonis- Your morphological undertaking has to do with the attempt to gather and ultimately group together narrative “utilitarian” objects in an oppositional relationship between Tchtatelnikov and Bozov. Good versus evil, which can also be a complementary relationship.
S.Kamaris- Certainly. In one of the boxes containing the personal items of the two protagonists, you can see a large pair of scissors. There I mention that the scissors once belonged to Bozov, who was a very good friend of Tchtatelnikov until he discovered that Tchtatelnikov had stolen them. So this great conflict is sparked off by this incident, with Bozov taking on the role of the bad guy more out of obstinacy than anything else. But as the story unfolds, I find Bozov becoming more and more likeable, because despite his medals and his obvious copying of his former friend’s wish-machine with the prescribed-wish machine (the one with the hammer-and-sickle that stops at an ex-voto), for me he is the truly unhappy one. And I thought of restoring his honour somehow... by having him commit suicide, or suddenly become paranoid at some gathering and start to shoot officers indiscriminately and so on. But anyway, yes, here he roughly symbolises evil, but I deliberately gave him a round and rather funny face, because I probably want him to be saved too.
K.V- While the plot of your work and the consistency of your materials is reminiscent of the atmosphere of a Dostoyevsky, Gorky or Solzhenitsyn novel, the way in which you remake your relationship with the material has a wider cultural significance; sometimes it even makes me think of the California School, for instance the assemblage guru Edward Kienholz.
S.K -I’m getting quite embarrassed now, as, after my ignorance of Soviet history, my ignorance of art and sculpture history is revealed. I might say that my excuse is that I supposedly studied painting, while my first work was probably on comics... That’s gone now, but anyway, I’ve just looked at Kienholz, I knew a few of his works (mainly the one with the pinball machine), and I can make out the affinities you mentioned. I only wish I could make things like that one day, though to be honest I’ve no idea what direction I might take in future. But I see a rather caustic mood in his work, and a mixture of different materials which I find quite familiar. Due to my origins, my dual nationality if you will, and the various disparate stimuli I received growing up, I often feel closer to certain foreign artists. The Balkan or the oriental element, so to say, are much more foreign to me, even though I’ve lived here in Greece almost my whole life. So maybe thanks to this rather fresh, if I can call it that, multiculturalism which distinguishes American history, I can more easily find affinities with artists there - when, of course, there are also affinities in character and way of thinking... I’m probably just talking at random. Never mind.
Stephanos Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Wish Monument", circa 1929 (120x70x50cm)
K.V- It’s probably not very important whether you know your “spiritual” relatives or not; once some possible similarities arise due to idiosyncrasy and common cultural references, it is inevitable that this story of genealogy will be repeated ad infinitum even if you or anybody else is disinclined to take it seriously. Do you believe that the viewer has the right to perceive your sculpture exclusively in static terms, as a composition in which he does not need to perceive the mechanical movement? Because in all your constructions there is always the ghost of a structure in progress, an imminent event, due to the fact that they are constructions that can offer movement, like the wish-machines for example, and also their noise when they are put into operation.
S.K- What I realise, and really makes me think, is that I’m not at all sure of my works. I don’t know if they can stand up if I remove all this history, if I remove the glass boxes and labels. But there again, I like writing and making up mythologies, I mean to say that I have never used anything with an ulterior motive, to conceal some other weakness. As to the other thing, what you’re probably really asking, I’m afraid the answer’s yes. But unfortunately, I too have got used to them being motionless and soundless, mainly for practical reasons. The machines are particularly sensitive, so half the time when I put them into operation something goes wrong and they won’t work. And even when they do, I stop them quickly because I’m afraid the worst might happen. Sometimes they seem to be avenging themselves for all the previous failed attempts and start speeding up exponentially. At least with the Antimachine, for example, I know that I can’t leave it on by definition, because - if it works - in about a minute (more or less) it will have sawn through its base and become something else. Also, in “Me and Bozov #2 and 3” (I gave it two numbers because I thought the character could change depending on the side it’s viewed from), the combustion construction, I made sure it was inoperable from the start (which wasn’t difficult), to avoid causing any damage. And you’re quite right about the noise you mention. Unfortunately though, purely for practical reasons of the machines’ survival, I can’t have them working for more than a very short time.
Stephanos Kamaris "Vitaliy Bozov - “Ready-Wish Machine”, also known as the “commissioned wish machine”, circa 1930.
K.V- Observing your constructions, I am tempted to find some analogies with modern art history, particularly a pioneering view that envisioned the application of science and engineering to sculpture, for example the industrial universe of kinetic sculpture.
S.K- I would love to have the knowledge to be able to combine science and art, but unfortunately I can’t. Of course, even there I believe that something always predominates. Searching for influences, I think first of Da Vinci, who was always been my favourite hero. But physics and chemistry were lessons I was always extremely bad at, although I would have liked it to be otherwise. All these machines are based mostly on the conversion of circular into linear motion, just as we see in train wheels, in the way they are connected. There’s nothing clever about them (I mean my own machines). I don’t think Tinguely influenced me either, as I wasn’t aware of him when I started building the machines. Duchamp probably did, and so did the famous German band Einstürzende Neubauten, with the various crazy instruments made by its members.
I’ve just remembered a small photograph I once saw in an art history book. It must have been by Giacometti, a very simple and beautiful structure, something like a male-female, with a sort of banana if I remember right, revolving or going up and down over a sphere - without an engine - but probably perpetually. That has certainly influenced me subconsciously in the construction with the theoretical combustion - where Klement Tchtatelnikov as a sphere with matches moves towards a revolving pyramid with sandpaper rings - Bozov. In two more works, again, the wish-machine with the rat built by Tchtatelnikov in prison and the Antimachine, in the little red sticks bearing the razor blades, I think I’ve been influenced by your own works.
K.V- You are referring to the best-known photographic version of the “Suspended Ball” in the Guggenheim Museum, from what I believe is Giacometti’s most creative period, before he became identified with his famous thin, elongated Impressionist figures. This playful mood of a metaphysics of mechanics which is common to you and to his early work, helps me to better apprehend a sort of Dadaist transcendence in your work, with technological know-how being used in order to be refuted, to lead from the invention to its ridicule, something which is evident in the construction with the sphere of matches moving towards the revolving sandpaper pyramid.
S.Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov - Wish-Machine № 5" (/Rat Machine),found in Solovki, where Klement Tchtatelnikov spent 8 years as a prisoner
S.K -Yes, that’s the one I meant, I hadn’t seen it since then and I still love it. Now, as regards the machines... They really do have something comical and ridiculous about them... But I’d better start at the beginning, with the completely useless and malfunctioning wish-machines, which just push a few coins, without of course being able to fulfil their promises. The starting-point was the habit, probably human above all (?), of dreaming and wishing for something better. When we throw a coin in the water and wish for something. I love this habit... maybe visually too, with the metal and the water. And it’s something that never stops. As a priest says, probably in 8½, we didn’t come into this world to be happy. With the “wish monument” - which does not have any mechanical function - I am also referring to this last, drawing a parallel with the wishes we make on falling stars: in this work, the wish-stars which have been fulfilled are essentially dead, as they have a bullet in their centre. So although this should normally have been a work symbolising happiness, it’s a common graveyard. But on the right we see a new star appearing again, and we start over... On the other hand, the inability of these machines to fulfil their promises clearly has something human and vulnerable about it. And from a political point of view, one could contrast these machines with the faceless and terrifying Communist regime. For me, in other words, these machines are more human than the supposedly joyful faces we see in Soviet propaganda posters. They are certainly machines, but machines running in reverse...
Let me refer here to the “Antimachine”, since you mentioned transcendence. This machine, whose concept, to be honest, seems far too simple for me not to have copied it from somewhere else - even if unconsciously - is a machine that becomes detached from itself. It is supported solely on a couple of springs and gnaws away at itself, or at least at its truly mechanical part, that which has nothing human about it, until it finally falls and is released from it. I’d originally given it a second title, “Scorpion Committing Suicide”. I’d also written a short poem (in English and then I developed it a bit), along the lines of:
Two insects dream of their future helmets,
I’ll be an astronaut, says the ant,
I’ll be a fireman, says the scorpion.
Something like that... So there goes the scorpion... But I finally decided that this was all wrong, because the Antimachine probably doesn’t commit suicide. It’s rather that it kills one of its selves, the purely mechanical one. In any case the title “Antimachine” is fairly appropriate and I think it’s enough. Now I think the poem was wrong too, as the scorpion might have achieved its transcendence, but then it would have had to be called “The Scorpion’s Revenge”, which I wouldn’t have liked at all.
K.V-The beginning of the poem is amazing... but let’s move on to the other works. The contest between Bozov and Tchtatelnikov in a final chess game with quite radically altered rules. What does this difference in the rules constitute? Evolution, revolution or sabotage?
S.K- Thank you very much... These different rules are obviously sabotage against Klement Tchtatelnikov, but one that he is probably responsible for, since I don’t think the game was ever played - I don’t think even Bozov himself would have agreed to play on such favourable terms, with over twice as many pawns and roughly an extra 4 points. Obviously the knight in chess is identified with the unexpected, with freedom (as opposed to the bishop of the same value, for example, which is a tower that moves diagonally), and therefore with the revolution. One could also say this of the pawn, since this is the only piece - with a lot of work, of course - which has the magical property of transformation. Practically, however, as any chess-player knows, the pawn always turns into a queen (like some powerful trade unionists). So I chose to use it basically for Bozov’s needs, as two rows of pawns would give him a sense of safety to start with, and of course he could also sacrifice many of them as required. So we have six knights versus two rooks, four bishops and another eight pawns, which probably means admitting defeat in advance - so this game expresses a more general futility. I tried to make them both play as well as possible (or at least make Bozov play relatively tolerably), and the fact that the game managed to reach 33 moves shows that there may have been some small hope for Klement Tchtatelnikov. The title, apart from the obvious political references, also refers to the “Evergreen Game”, an actual game played between Anderssen and Dufresne in 1852 which has gone down in history for its beauty.
Klement Tchtatelnikov - Me and Bozov # 2&3, circa 1945 (30x33x18cm)
K.V- Tchtatelnikov is recognised as a humble mortal who will be glorified for his ingenuity, his resourcefulness and, finally, his actual sense of humour, which sometimes makes the human race seem likeable. In fact, however, in the gulags there was no intention among all those thousands of dissidents of having a heroic and glorious death.
Does your own antihero represent these souls consciously, as far as you are concerned, or do you limit yourself to the requirements of the narrative? What is your ideological position?
S.K- Although I haven’t read any books on the subject, I did glance at Appelbaum’s on the Internet and bought the encyclopaedia of Russian prison tattoos (2 and 3), and I also remember I saw a book on eBay referring to plays being put on in Solovki Gulag itself. From the tattoo books I learnt that political prisoners were tortured by various common murderers, etc., with the blessings of the guards. And that the usual term for political dissidents was eight years. That’s what Tchtatelnikov got. Since, as I told you, I knew nothing about the subject, I wanted to avoid something completely simplistic like “he was sent to the gulag and died there”. From what I read, many people managed to survive. In a museum in Riga I also saw various beautiful objects made by inmates, and I thought that maybe - depending on the circumstances and at least in secret - someone might be able to make something while he was a prisoner. And of course it suited the story itself that Klement Tchtatelnikov should get out of there alive, so he would be able to refer to his experiences afterwards. (I’ve also thought of sending him to America to make completely different works, or to Uruguay where he could have, unbeknown to him, a former Nazi for a neighbour - more for fun than anything else).
Now, to answer the question, I won’t say anything groundbreaking: I’m in favour of freedom of the individual, and in favour of honesty, in a rather vague and general way. I don’t know if there are any perfect systems of government, but I do know that there is always a huge gap between theory and practice. I could call myself a leftist, but again I don’t know; all that requires a consistency that I haven’t got, and I don’t know whether people like me should appropriate the term just because it sounds good. And when I see certain public figures, especially, trying to identify themselves with the left, just making a noise, while their whole life’s attitude is based on abuse of power, I get really annoyed. So I’d better not say anything. If I talk about anarchism, maybe again it’s just a convenient word which can be applied to anything, and in my case means simply opportunism in a supposedly revolutionary wrapping. I really don’t know how to answer at all. If, of course, I didn’t think there was something good in the Communist system, I wouldn’t bother with it or criticise it. I mean to say, I wouldn’t be as interested in portraying a comparable case of a hero in the Nazi regime. There, I think things would be much simpler, and the potential hero would immediately be a superhero... So I was interested in this coexistence of good and evil, not in evil in its pure form. That, again, may sound pro-Stalinist... What can I say, I’m against all those organised situations...
K.V- With your myth-making you are sharing your knowledge of a man’s past, as though you were responsible for preserving and finally exhibiting his personal archive. By this choice you are undermining, at least theoretically, your own quality of creator, since the executor of the work is K. Tchtatelnikov himself and, in a few cases, Bozov. Apart from the special circumstances of the concept of the group, which demand distancing as a technique for better utilisation of the narrative, might there also be other reasons for this?
Stephanos Kamaris, "Klement Tchtatelnikov – Tchtatelnikov Square Model", 1/15 scale, circa 1929 (30x35x40 cm)
S.K -All right, I think this undermining is quite theoretical, as you say. But I must admit that I felt quite strange when, in one of the first versions of Klement Tchtatelnikov’s self-portrait after the gulag - the door with many eyes - I signed with his initials at the bottom… The initials have now been removed, though for aesthetic reasons. Certainly the answer requires a lot of psychoanalysis… Because it’s not the first time I’ve done something like this, and it can’t just be chance. As I told you before, I used to work - as a complete amateur - on comics. The technical part of my degree dissertation at the School of Fine Arts in Italy was entitled “The signature of Matthew Longthroat”. It was the story of a failed (at least until the final page, when things are reversed) artist, who was ashamed to sign his works, and who, whenever he did, quickly regretted it and erased his signature. I am very emotionally attached to this story, particularly the last panel. Later I also tried to write a novel, which I abandoned after some time. The hero was, again, a painter, but a relatively well-known one - as opposed to the previous hero. The plot, of course, was rather far-fetched - the painter had three secret pseudonyms (and identities), and a younger half-sister (with whom he had of course lost touch), who knew one of them because the hero had used it in the paintings he used to draw for her when they were both small. Things were so twisted that another, fourth identity of the hero was that of an art critic who constantly abused him in his reviews... So I think all this could do with psychoanalysis. It must be some sort of persecution complex. Perhaps I’m trying, out of fear or embarrassment, to find a somewhat safe point between creation and criticism, although these concepts are peculiarly relative and mutually inclusive to some degree in each case...
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Functional Architect
The Functional Architect” building blocks designed by the architects A.A Schoug and G.Dalsgaard, 1935. The blocks were made in Danish prisons and sold by the Danish Toy Factory.
Monday, January 30, 2012
‘Decommission, Rewrite, and Change’ Franco Berardi alias Bifo
Franco Berardi in a demonstration in in the seventies
Franco Berardi is one of the controversial Italian thinkers who are seeking a solution for the gradually collapsing capitalistic system. For him, the best method of fighting today’s abuses comes from an unexpected corner, through love. Only in this manner can the tormented social body recover after years of being driven into the ground.
Merijn Oudenampsen:
How do you look at the present crisis from the perspective on capitalism that you have developed in your work, which revolves around the interconnectedness of economy, language and psychology?
Franco Berardi:
‘Do you remember what happened at the end of the nineties and especially in the spring of the year 2000? After a decade of development, after the belief in the possibility of the infinite expansion of a virtual capitalism based on new technologies, there was a collapse. The bursting of the dot-com bubble. It was a very important moment. And in a sense, what happened in September 2008 in the United States and what is happening now in Europe can be considered as the long after-effects of the crisis of 2000. Because in that crisis, all the elements of novelty, of the new forms of capitalism which I like to call semiocapitalism, became apparent.
The idea of semiocapitalism is based on the interconnection of information technology and the production of economic value. But in this kind of relationship, the human brain and human sensibility is deeply involved as part of the production process, and it also has a fundamental role to play in consumption. The boom of the nineties was based on the exploitation of the human brain, if we look at it from the point of view of immaterial labour and from the attention economy, or rather, the invasion and occupation of our attention by new technologies. Writers like Kevin Kelly, Peter Schwartz, Nicholas Negroponte: all those people were theorizing the possibility of what they called a long boom, an infinite boom. Their theories were deeply flawed, because they were unable to understand that the capacities of the human brain are not infinite. The human brain is limited with regard to physical energy, with regard to affection, with regard to desire, suffering and depression. The days of the long boom, the decade of the nineties, were also the years of Prozac. These were also the years of excitement, produced by the hyper-exploitation of the human mind and the intense use of euphoric drugs.
Now, the crisis of 2000 has been forgotten, because immediately after came the shock of September 11, the beginning of the infinite war launched by the Bush administration. This has been an insane escape from the effects of the crisis. It was an attempt to renew military production, but the war has not been a good pharmaceutic. You can compare it with a person who is in a deep depression, taking amphetamines. It is not the right therapy for depression.
Year after year, the global schizo-economy – a concept I use to bring together economic production and the exploitation of the mind – has been building up to a new, and I think final, collapse. What we see is the coming true of an old prediction, that of the Club of Rome, who in the year of 1972 published a report titled The Limits to Growth. Economic growth cannot be infinite, for a very simple reason. Namely that physical resources are limited, as well as the psychic and mental resources of human kind. The network form has hugely enlarged the possibilities of production, but we are limited as human beings.’
Merijn Oudenampsen:
One could say that whereas before, politics revolved around the promise to increase the size of the pie, characterized by ‘win-win’, presently it is limited to the evermore-bitter struggle over the distribution of what is left of it, a ‘zero-sum-game’. To give you an example, currently in the Netherlands the government has money to bail out the banks, to subsidize home-owners, to build roads, but in order to do that it extracts money from education, from culture, from handicapped people, from healthcare, from social housing and so on. Similar things are happening in Italy now, with the austerity package being implemented by Berlusconi. What is your take on that?
Franco Berardi:
‘I just came back from a demonstration that happened this morning in the city of Bologna. Students were protesting in front of the Banca de Italia, chanting slogans such as ‘more money for the schools, less money for the banks’ and so on. These kinds of protests are spreading all over Europe nowadays. Everybody understands that if you destroy the school system or something simple like the sewage system, let’s say the basic infrastructure of production, it will not help the future economy. But this is the current policy of the European Central Bank, this is the policy for dealing with the financial crisis at the European level. Look at what is happening in Greece, for instance. In Greece, in April 2010, the problem of that country’s huge public debt exploded. The Greek government was obliged to start a policy aimed at extracting resources from the economy in order to pay the German and French banks. Now, one and a half years after that decision, the Greece’s gross national product has fallen by seven percent. The result is that production is going down, and the debt, unavoidably, is skyrocketing up. It makes you wonder: Are those people leading the central bank crazy? Do they understand that what they are doing is totally crippling the basis of what is a healthy economy? Because you cannot withdraw resources from production, from effective demand, from society, and ask for the payment of the debt. That is impossible. I have the suspicion that they are not working on fixing the European economy. They perceive the end of something and they are looking towards a sort of hold-up, a robbery, a huge displacement of wealth from workers, from society, from education, towards the banks and the financial class.
I know that this can seem paranoid, and I do not like to be paranoid. But this is not the effect of a human conspiracy; I do not think it is Angela Merkel, Jean Claude Trichet or Nicolas Sarkozy who are masterminding this dark future. I think it is something that is deeply inscribed in the software of the financial architecture. We have been producing a machine that is only able to think in terms of fighting inflation, enhancing profits, and enforcing competition. The automated system, I mean the software, has been conceived in a form that has now turned destructive in relation to social wealth.
Just to say a word or two on Italy: during the last two years, eight billion Euros have been withdrawn from education. And a hundred thirty thousand teachers have been fired in the Italian schools. What do you think, is this the way to renew growth in Italy? Is it the way to think of the future of Italian society? Obviously not.’
Merijn Oudenampsen:
You just published a new book, After the Future. Could you tell us something about the book?
Franco Berardi:
‘I started writing the book in February of 2009. It was the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Futurist Manifesto. Futurism is a literary and artistic movement that has been hugely important, both culturally and politically. It can be seen as the first avant-garde movement, which was actively out to overturn society. What defines the Futurist Manifesto, and the Futurist culture in general? It is the exaltation of the virtues of the future. In a sense the futurist movement is an extreme version of the modern veneration of the future as progress, as expansion, and finally, as growth. There is no reason to assume that our idea of the future is something natural. Just think of the theological man of the middle ages: for him, perfection was not in the future. For him perfection was in the past, the time of paradise lost, when God created the world. Then there’s the Renaissance, when the idea comes up of a future produced by man, in a conscious and voluntarist way, politically and economically. In the nineteenth century, the idea of the future as progress becomes part of the human psyche. At the end of the twentieth century, this mythology comes to an end. First of all because of the crisis in the field of energy resources, especially fossil fuels, because of the awareness that growth cannot be infinite.
The beginning of that awareness was already present in the seventies, especially in the year 1977. The year when Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols went in the streets of London, crying ‘NO FUTURE’. That cry produced deep ripples in the youth culture of the following decades. After the Future is an attempt to rethink the present moment. We live in a time when the expectation of a progressive, expansive future proves illusionary. And it is a dangerous illusion, also because the world is getting old. The human population, not only in Europe but also in China, in India, in Latin America, with the exception of the Arabic world, is ageing. People are living longer and birth rates are going down. The physical energies of the planet are running out. So we have to live with the exhaustion, which can be a very interesting experience if we are able to face it in a non-aggressive and non-competitive way. We don’t need more things. We have too many things in our houses. We need more time, more affection, more solidarity. If we do not understand that, then war will become the only language between humans.
To finish, let me talk about an initiative, a call that I have written together with Geert Lovink. It is directed at the large army of lovers and the small army of software programmers. This is a call to resist, and our main point is that the movement that is coming to the streets in New York and Europe will not win this fight, because this fight cannot be won in the streets. Going to the streets is important, absolutely necessary. It is the way to start the real fight that will come afterwards. And what is the real fight? It is the fight of love. The ability to reactivate the bodies, the social and erotic body, that has been paralyzed by twenty years of precarization, by twenty years of impoverishment. Secondly, the real fight is the fight of software developers, of the people who have been writing the software of the financial system. We call on them in order for them to do what Wikileaks has done in the field of information: decommission, rewrite, and change the course of the future.
Source: http://metropolism.com
Metropolis M
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Vandalism Series
John Divola, Vandalism Series: archivally processed black and white photograph 20 x 16 inches, 1973-75.
The Leaves are Falling
Here I am saying “The leaves are falling”
—one of those choruses
that vie with interminable verses
to mock hoarders.
Yeah, we get
that a palette of winds
is a pretty thing:
one blurs the anther, another
the river splurging on riprap,
expunging
phosphates,
out of the temperature
differential building
sculptural fogs
that promenade
between shores a glacier
wedged ajar, a fjord.
Whatever gives the river
its seriousness reverses
in the light
of those clouds moving
as if absorbing
their pomp in advance of it—
characters
which untied the painter
and took the sculls again.
Ange Mlinko
2008
—one of those choruses
that vie with interminable verses
to mock hoarders.
Yeah, we get
that a palette of winds
is a pretty thing:
one blurs the anther, another
the river splurging on riprap,
expunging
phosphates,
out of the temperature
differential building
sculptural fogs
that promenade
between shores a glacier
wedged ajar, a fjord.
Whatever gives the river
its seriousness reverses
in the light
of those clouds moving
as if absorbing
their pomp in advance of it—
characters
which untied the painter
and took the sculls again.
Ange Mlinko
2008
Monday, January 23, 2012
Η Δελφική Ουτοπία
Το «Δελφικό Κέντρο», ήταν ένα όραμα του Σικελιανού για την δημιουργία μιας αυτόνομης κοινότητας στους Δελφούς. Ένα πνευματικό κέντρο το οποίο θα προωθούσε την επαφή των επιστημόνων, των καλλιτεχνών και των πνευματικών ανθρώπων όλων των χωρών. Ένα κέντρο το οποίο θα μπορούσε να κατασκευαστεί μόνο στους Δελφούς, εκεί «στον ιερό χώρο των Αρχαίων Αμφικτιονιών».
Αυτό το όραμα του Σικελιανού, το οποίο ανέλαβε να σχεδιάσει ο Δημήτρης Πικιώνης, δίνοντας του τελικά μια μορφή η οποία παρέπεμπε σε έναν αρχαϊκό ή παραδοσιακό οικισμό, μας μιλάει αφενός για τη σχέση μοντερνισμού και αρχαιότητας και ειδικότερα για το πώς η αρχαιότητα επαναφέρεται συνειδητά στο προσκήνιο την μοντέρνα εποχή. Όπως ανέφερε ο Boissy το 1927 για τις Δελφικές Εορτές:
Το γεγονός τούτο αποτελεί δια την Ελλάδαν μαρτυρία της αναγεννήσεως της ευγενεστέρας αισθητικής.
Έτσι θα μπορούσε το παρελθόν να επανέρθει στην μοντέρνα εποχή ως κάτι το ζωντανό, ως ένα διαχρονικό αισθητικό πρότυπο το οποίο θα εδραίωνε τη συνέχεια ανάμεσα στην παράδοση και την πρωτοπορία. Το «Δελφικό Κέντρο» ως μία πρότυπη κοινότητα του μεσοπολέμου η οποία βαδίζει προς το μέλλον κοιτάζοντας πάντα πίσω της εκφράζει ακριβώς αυτό το όραμα ενός ιδεατού (υπεργήινου) μέλλοντος το οποίο πηγάζει από ένα εξιδανικευμένο μυθικό παρελθόν.
Αυτό το όραμα του Σικελιανού έμεινε όμως στα χαρτιά. Στα πολλά σχετικά κείμενα που έγραψε με πάθος ο ίδιος ο ποιητής, αλλά και στα αρκετά σκίτσα που μας άφησε ο Δημήτρης Πικιώνης, σκίτσα που βρίσκονται πολύ κοντά μας, μέσα σε αυτό εδώ το μουσείο.
Το «Δελφικό Κέντρο», έχει μείνει πλέον στη συνείδησή μας ως μια ουτοπία του ελληνικού μεσοπολεμικού μοντερνισμού. Και ως μια τέτοια ουτοπία θα επιχειρήσω να το δω σήμερα.
ΤΟ ΟΡΑΜΑ
Γνωστοί από τις ανασκαφές της Γαλλικής Σχολής, οι Δελφοί παρουσιάζονται, με τα λόγια του Theophile Homolle, ως ένας τόπος μεγαλείου, μυστηρίου, αποκάλυψης του θείου, παρουσίας των θεών. Κι όλα αυτά σε ενεστώτα χρόνο. Όχι κάτι που ήταν κάποτε, κάτι που υπήρχε στο παρελθόν, αλλά κάτι που είναι, εδώ και τώρα. Η αρχαία πολιτεία μάλιστα αναδύεται μέσα από το έδαφος, αφού πρώτα «καταπιεί» το Καστρί, τον σύγχρονο οικισμό, που δεν φαίνεται να έχει τίποτα το ιερό και το μαγευτικό. Το σημαντικό άρα είναι αυτό που είναι κάτω από το έδαφος, έρχεται από το παρελθόν για να αναβιώσει στο σήμερα.
Κρυμμένοι στην ενδοχώρα, απομονωμένοι από τους γύρω οικισμούς, οι Δελφοί δεσπόζουν πάνω στο βουνό. Με τα λόγια του Σικελιανού:
Ο Παρνασσός πλαισιώνεται πνευματικά απ’ τα Ιμαλάια, και απ’ οποιαδήποτε κορφή του οι μυημένοι αντικρίζουνε ακέριο τον ορίζοντα της Γης.
Όπως τα Ιμαλάια λοιπόν, έτσι και ένα ελληνικό βουνό, ο Παρνασσός υποδέχεται μια πολιτεία ιερή. Αντίστοιχα με τη σύνδεση Παρνασσός-Ιμαλάια γίνεται και η σύνδεση Δελφοί–Δελχί, αναδεικνύοντας έτσι μια πνευματική συγγένεια βασισμένη πάνω σε μια υποτιθέμενη κοινή γλωσσική καταγωγή.
Όπως και να έχει το μεταφυσικό περιεχόμενο είναι αυτό που κυριαρχεί. Ήδη το 1921 ο Σικελιανός γράφει στον Νίκο Καζαντζάκη σχετικά με ένα «κοσμικό μοναστήρι» που σχεδιάζει να οργανώσει, επαναφέροντας την ουτοπία του Campanella στη μοντέρνα εποχή.
Λίγα χρόνια μετά, το 1924, ο Σικελιανός θα εμφανιστεί πάνω στους Δελφούς ντυμένος «με το παχύ ένδυμα αρτίου ψευδοπροφήτου», όπως θα γράψει ο Τάκης Παπατσώνης, για να μιλήσει για το Δελφικό όραμα, για την προσπάθειά του να «μυήσει τον κόσμο σε μία νέα χαώδη θρησκεία».
Ποιά είναι όμως εκείνα τα χαρακτηριστικά που μας κάνουν να μιλάμε για ουτοπία; Σε μια πρώτη προσέγγιση το Δελφικό Κέντρο, όπως κάθε παραδοσιακή ουτοπία έχει μια εμμονή στην οριοθέτηση, την περιχαράκωση, τη διάκριση ανάμεσα στο μέσα και το έξω. Στον Thomas More είναι η μεγάλη τάφρος ανάμεσα στο νησί και την ενδοχώρα. Στο Δελφικό Κέντρο, το τοίχος και η πύλη που σχεδιάζει ο Πικιώνης σε διαφορετικές μορφές, εκφράζουν συμβολικά, άλλοτε εντονότερα και άλλοτε πιο διακριτικά, αυτό το όριο που εξασφαλίζει αυτονομία και αυτάρκεια.
Όπως κάθε σοβαρή ουτοπία, έτσι και το Δελφικό Κέντρο δεν μπορεί παρά να έχει και ένα ορισμένο πολιτικό υπόβαθρο. Ο Σικελιανός θα υιοθετήσει μια ξεκάθαρη ρητορική την οποία συναντάμε εκείνη την εποχή και αλλού στην Ευρώπη. Αντίθετος στον αστισμό και τον καπιταλισμό, / θλιβερά φαινόμενα μιας σημιτικής ιδεολογίας όπως γράφει, θα κηρύξει τους Δελφούς ως κέντρο εναντίον του κάθε είδους υλισμού. Θα ευαγγελιστεί την Αρεία «ηθική και διανοητικότητα» απ’ όπου πηγάζουν αξίες όπως ο αλτρουισμός, η γενναιότητα, η αλληλεγγύη. Θα επιτεθεί στην «αχαμνή σημιτική του Μαρξ θεωρία» και θα προτιμήσει το ηγετικό προφίλ του Λένιν, αλλά και το αναρχικό πνεύμα του Κροπότκιν.
Ωστόσο το Δελφικό Κέντρο δεν θα ακολουθήσει ένα ριζοσπαστικό κοινωνικό μοντέλο, ούτε θα προτείνει ένα νέο, καλύτερο πολιτικό σύστημα. Η αντίδραση στην αστική δημοκρατία και τον υλισμό δεν είναι μια ρήξη προς τα εμπρός, αλλά μία επαναφορά στη σιγουριά του πίσω, στην ολιγαρχία, την αριστοκρατία, ακόμα κι αν μιλάμε για την πνευματική αριστοκρατία των «εκλεκτών». Αυτή η στροφή η οποία υπαγορεύεται από τη νοσταλγία και εμφανίζεται ως πρωτοπορία, είναι κάτι που συναντάμε βέβαια συχνά σε ουτοπίες του μοντερνισμού. Σε αυτήν την περίπτωση το προσδοκώμενο δεν είναι αυτό που δεν έχει έρθει ακόμα, δεν είναι δηλαδή η αναζήτηση άλλων πιθανών εκβάσεων της πολιτικής και της ιστορίας όπως θα ήθελε ο Ernst Bloch, αλλά η αναπόληση αυτού που δεν υπάρχει πια. Όχι το pas encore, αλλά το αντίθετό του, το non plus.
Στον τομέα της οικονομίας και της παραγωγής το Δελφικό Κέντρο είναι εκείνη η περίπτωση όπου η μοντέρνα ουτοπία νοσταλγεί την προβιομηχανική κοινωνία. Βαδίζοντας πάνω σε μια λογική τύπου Morris ο Σικελιανός τονίζει την αξία της κοινοβιακής μη αλλοτριωμένης εργασίας και παρουσιάζει τα δικά του «νέα από το πουθενά». Θέτει ως προϋπόθεση της κατασκευής του ίδιου του Κέντρου την εθελοντική δουλειά των τοπικών μαστόρων, αλλά και «των αστέγων της Δελφικής περιοχής και των άλλων Ελλήνων, προσφύγων και μη». Έτσι «τα έξοδα για την ανέγερση αυτή των κτηρίων του συνοικισμού, της κοινότητας και του Δελφικού Κέντρου θα περιορίζονταν στο ελάχιστο, χάρη στην εθελοντική προσωπική εργασία χιλιάδων Ελλήνων».
Η Δελφική κοινότητα στο μυαλό του Σικελιανού θα μπορούσε επίσης να είναι αυτόνομη, να ζει από την εκμετάλλευση της δικής της γεωργικής και βιοτεχνικής παραγωγής. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο είναι που εντάσσεται και η τέχνη. Η τέχνη όχι ως έργα για το μουσείο, αλλά ως διακοσμημένα αντικείμενα μιας χρηστικής λειτουργίας. Η τέχνη ως καθημερινή πρακτική, σε ένα αυτοτελές σύνολο, έναν αυτόνομο και αυτάρκη οικισμό, έναν κόσμο σταθερό και πλήρη. Τόσο πλήρη ώστε και η ίδια η τέχνη να μοιάζει περιττή.
Η ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ
Όπως κι αν είχαν τα πράγματα όμως στο όραμα του Σικελιανού ή στα σχέδια του Πικιώνη, η πορεία από τη φαντασία στην πραγματικότητα δεν ήταν εύκολη. Από νωρίς είχε γίνει σε όλους σαφές ότι αυτή η κοινότητα, όσο τέλεια και αν λειτουργούσε, δεν θα μπορούσε να σταθεί στα δικά της πόδια χωρίς εξωτερική βοήθεια. Γι αυτό και ο Σικελιανός εναπόθετε τις περισσότερες ελπίδες του στον τουρισμό. Ο Σικελιανός εμφανίζονταν σίγουρος ότι οι Δελφοί μπορούν να γίνουν ένας προορισμός ιδιαίτερα σημαντικός. Πόσο σημαντικός; Στο μυαλό του Σικελιανού οι Δελφοί, έχοντας μια παγκόσμια εμβέλεια θα μπορέσουν άνετα να ξεπεράσουν σε επισκεψιμότητα το ταπεινό Salzburg. Οι ακτοπλοϊκές γραμμές θα συνέδεαν την Ιτέα με την κεντρική και βόρεια Ευρώπη και από τα δεκάδες υπερωκεάνια θα έφταναν εκατομμύρια τουρίστες. Το μέγεθος των Δελφών δεν μπορούσε να θεωρείται μειονέκτημα. Όπως σε κάθε ουτοπία, η μικρή κοινότητα είχε σημασία αντιστρόφως ανάλογη του μεγέθους της και εμβέλεια που ξεπερνούσε κατά πολύ τα γεωγραφικά της όρια.
Η προσδοκία των εσόδων που θα έφερνε ο τουρισμός ήταν και αυτή που ενθουσίαζε τον τύπο της εποχής. Θα δούνε οι ξένοι, γράφανε οι εφημερίδες, ότι δεν υπάρχουν μόνο οι Δελφοί και τα αρχαία αλλά και η Αράχοβα με το τσαρούχι, τη φλογέρα και το δημοτικό της τραγούδι. Κάπως έτσι είδε το θέμα και η πολιτεία που άρχισε να σκέφτεται ζεστά το ενδεχόμενο κατασκευής ενός μεγάλου ξενοδοχείου, ένα ενδεχόμενο που έμοιαζε να προχωράει κάποια στιγμή. Ο υπουργός συμφώνησε, ο οργανισμός τουρισμού το ενέκρινε, το οικόπεδο βρέθηκε και απαλλοτριώθηκε. Τότε όμως εμφανίστηκε ένα πρακτικό πρόβλημα. Το νερό της Κασταλίας πηγής δεν έφτανε για να καλύψει μεγάλες ξενοδοχειακές εγκαταστάσεις και η σκέψη για μεταφορά νερού απαιτούσε τεχνικά και οικονομικά μέσα τα οποία η πολιτεία δεν ήταν διατεθειμένη να δώσει. Ο τύπος δεν έκρυβε τις ανησυχίες του: λόγω της έλλειψης νερού, η Δελφική Ιδέα κινδύνευε να γίνει Ουτοπία.
Οι ανησυχίες επαληθεύτηκαν όταν η έλλειψη ενός τέτοιου ξενοδοχείου υποδοχής εμφανίστηκε με δραματικό τρόπο στις δεύτερες Δελφικές Εορτές. Τότε ήταν που κατά τη διάρκεια των παραστάσεων, μια βροχή έφτασε για να προκαλέσει το χάος και να κάνει το όνειρο εφιάλτη. Οι δρόμοι έκλεισαν, ο χώρος γέμισε λάσπη, τα πρόχειρα καταλύματα έμπαζαν από παντού. Καλοντυμένοι κύριοι έβριζαν και κυρίες με σπασμένα τακούνια μετάνιωναν για τον ερχομό τους στους Δελφούς. Όπως έγραψαν και οι εφημερίδες οι επισκέπτες:
Μεταννούσαν δια των ερχομό των εις τους Δελφούς ως εάν να είχαν κάμη την μεγαλειτέραν τρέλλαν της ζωής τους!
Ο Βενιζέλος πάλι ασχολούνταν με πιο επείγοντα προβλήματα. Ο αντιακριδικός αγώνας του φαινόταν σημαντικότερος. Προκειμένου να εξοντωθούν οι ακρίδες προτιμότερο θα ήταν να σταματήσουν οι Δελφικές Εορτές. Η επίσημη πολιτεία έμοιαζε να έχει άλλες προτεραιότητες. Το Δελφικό Κέντρο φλέρταρε πλέον επικίνδυνα με την Ουτοπία.
Όσο η Ελλάδα φαινόταν απρόθυμη και δυσκίνητη στην πορεία υλοποίησης του Δελφικού Κέντρου, τόσο ο Σικελιανός προσπαθούσε να κάνει το όραμά του μια διεθνή υπόθεση. Το 1928, σε μία ελληνογαλλική συνάντηση στο Παρίσι, ο Σικελιανός προτείνει, μια συμβολική κίνηση. Τη μεταφορά του ιερού πυρός από τον τάφο του άγνωστου στρατιώτη στο Παρίσι, στον ναό του Απόλλωνα στους Δελφούς. Οι συνδαιτυμόνες, ανάμεσα στους οποίους προσωπικότητες όπως ο Gabriel Boissy, ο Mario Mennier κ.α. ενθουσιάζονται στην ιδέα. Αυτοί που αντιδρούν όμως είναι ιταλοί δημοσιογράφοι οι οποίοι την θεώρησαν μια «γαλλική πνευματική προπαγάνδα», ένα ελληνογαλλικό μέτωπο ενάντια στην πρόσφατη ελληνοϊταλική συμμαχία.
Πιθανά εκείνη την περίοδο που βρίσκεται στο Παρίσι, το 1928, ο Σικελιανός είναι που έχει και την ιδέα για μια διεθνή έκθεση μοντέρνας τέχνης στους Δελφούς με έργα των Picasso, Braque, Derain, Léger κ.α. καθώς και η πρόσκληση στον Le Corbusier να έρθει να την διοργανώσει. Παράλληλα ο Σικελιανός συνεχίζει τις επαφές του με τους Γάλλους διανοούμενους ελπίζοντας σε ένα ακόμα οργανωμένο ταξίδι στους Δελφούς, χωρίς όμως να έχει το επιθυμητό αποτέλεσμα. Από την άλλη, ούτε η Εύα Πάλμερ καταφέρνει να βρει οικονομική υποστήριξη για το Δελφικό Κέντρο στην Αμερική. Αν και απευθύνεται σε πολλούς – από παλιούς γνωστούς μέχρι και το ίδρυμα Rockefeller - όλοι ακούν με ενδιαφέρον το σχέδιο για το Δελφικό Κέντρο κανένας όμως δεν έχει τη διάθεση να το ενισχύσει οικονομικά. Η Ουτοπία έρχεται ένα βήμα πιο κοντά.
Η ΟΥΤΟΠΙΑ ΠΟΥ ΕΓΙΝΕ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ
Στην εποχή του Μεσοπολέμου, το Δελφικό Κέντρο αποτέλεσε μία μοναδική περίπτωση για την Ελλάδα, ένα φιλόδοξο όραμα χωρίς προηγούμενο. Η Δελφική Ουτοπία εμφανίστηκε ως μία πρόταση για ένα νέο, μοντέρνο, πνευματικό κέντρο το οποίο θα αναβίωνε τις αισθητικές αρχές και αξίες του παρελθόντος.
Η Ελλάδα του 1920 και του 1930 όμως, δεν έβλεπε την αναβίωση της αρχαιότητας με την ιδιαίτερη ματιά του Σικελιανού ή του Πικιώνη, αλλά μόνο ως ευκαιρία οικονομικής ανάπτυξης μιας μικρής αποδυναμωμένης περιοχής μέσω του τουρισμού. Οι περισσότεροι πολιτικοί μπορεί να έμοιαζαν ενθουσιασμένοι με το Δελφικό όραμα, αλλά πίσω από αυτό έβλεπαν μάλλον τα χρήματα που θα εισέρχονταν στα ταμεία ή τους ψήφους από την τοπική κοινωνία. Μια κοινωνία η οποία σαν όραμα για το δικό της μέλλον πιθανά δεν είχε τις εικόνες με τις χλαμύδες και τα δόρατα των δελφικών εορτών, αλλά τις διαφημίσεις από τις ηλεκτρικές κουζίνες και τα ψυγεία που έβρισκε λίγο πιο δίπλα, στις ίδιες σελίδες των εφημερίδων της εποχής.
Εκεί ακριβώς είναι που εισάγεται στην όλη ιστορία μία αντίφαση. Ποιά; Μα ακριβώς το γεγονός ότι για να λειτουργήσει ο «αρχαϊκός κόσμος» του Δελφικού Κέντρου θα έπρεπε να υποστηριχθεί από πλήθος μοντέρνα έργα, δίκτυα και κατασκευές. Δρόμους, αυτοκίνητα, καράβια, λιμάνια, επικοινωνίες. Αυτό που θα επέτρεπε στο παρελθόν να αναβιώσει θα ήταν με άλλα λόγια η μοντέρνα εποχή. Για να υλοποιηθεί η Δελφική Ουτοπία και να γίνει πραγματικότητα, το Δελφικό Κέντρο θα έπρεπε να πάψει να είναι ουτοπία και να γίνει ιστορία.
Αν όμως υπάρχει κάτι που δεν μπορεί να γίνει η ουτοπία αυτό είναι ιστορία. Τουλάχιστον η μοντέρνα ουτοπία η οποία εμφανίζεται ως κατεξοχήν αντι-ιστορική, ως ένας κόσμος ο οποίος είναι έξω από την ιστορία. Έτσι και το Δελφικό Κέντρο, ως μοντέρνα ουτοπία, αναφέρεται σε μια ονειρική συνθήκη, σε μία ιδανική εποχή όπου στην πολιτική δεν υπάρχει η σύγκρουση και στην κοινωνία δεν υπάρχει ο μόχθος. Σε μια εποχή δηλαδή όπου, θα έχει πλέον επέλθει το τέλος της ιστορίας.
Στην αρχετυπική ουτοπία του More, ο Ούτοπος ιδρύει και φτιάχνει μια πολιτεία εκ του μηδενός, χωρίς καμιά αναφορά σε καταγωγή, προγόνους και παρελθόν. Στην περίπτωση του Δελφικού Κέντρου έχουμε το ακριβώς αντίθετο. Μια ουτοπία η οποία φτιάχνεται ακριβώς πάνω σε αυτό που ήδη υπάρχει ή μάλλον από αυτό που ήδη υπάρχει, από αποσπάσματα και μέρη του πραγματικού και συμβολικού του σώματος. Μήπως λοιπόν, θα έπρεπε να είμαστε πιο προσεκτικοί όταν χαρακτηρίζουμε το Δελφικό Κέντρο ως Ουτοπία; Ίσως. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι αυτήν τη λέξη ο Σικελιανός και ο Πικιώνης δεν την χρησιμοποίησαν ποτέ.
Κωστας Τσιαμπαος
Εισηγηση απο το συνεδριο "Παρίσι - Αθήνα 1919-1939. Το διπλό ταξίδι" με θέμα τις καλλιτεχνικές και πνευματικές σχέσεις Ελλάδας-Γαλλίας μεταξύ 1919-1939. Μουσειο Μπενακη, 20 Ιανουαρίου.
Source:kostastsiambaos.blogspot.com/
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